Sundance’s latest slate of queer films adds to its rich legacy of shaping LGBTQ culture
Iconic queer films like “The Times of Harvey Milk” and “Go Fish” and new titles including “Layla” and “Desire Lines” will screen at Sundance's 40th edition.
As thousands of creators, actors and indie film industry types from across the globe descend on the little mountain resort town of Park City, Utah, this week for the 40th Sundance Film Festival, another chapter will be written in the long legacy of Sundance-born LGBTQ stories profoundly affecting not just queer movie audiences, but queer culture as a whole.
More than 400 feature-length LGBTQ films have already screened at Sundance during its first four decades, and some dozen more will join that list in this year’s edition, which runs from Jan. 18 through Jan. 28 in Park City, with most films also screening in nearby Salt Lake City and many streaming virtually beginning Jan. 25.
The festival’s queer legacy stretches back to 1985, when Sundance screened its first LGBTQ-themed films: Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg’s “Before Stonewall,” a documentary about the gay rights movement prior to the pivotal 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City, and Rob Epstein’s “The Times of Harvey Milk,” a documentary centered on the iconic gay rights leader who was assassinated in San Francisco in 1978.
“The one-two punch of ‘Before Stonewall’ and ‘The Times of Harvey Milk’ being the first two LGBTQ films to play at Sundance in 1985 was pretty significant and a strong political statement coming at the height of the AIDS crisis,” said Bruce LaBruce, who has directed four provocative Sundance-screened films since 1995, including “Super 8 1/2” and “The Raspberry Reich.”
Harvey Milk in front of his Castro Street Camera Store in 1977 from "The Times of Harvey Milk" by Rob Epstein.Daniel Nicoletta / Courtesy of Sundance InstituteDirector Jenni Olson, a three-film Sundance veteran who co-created the festival’s long-running Queer Brunch event in 1997, said the Milk film “remains one of the best LGBTQ docs of all time.”
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