Nazis and Blondes (2008)

Perhaps the most amazing and groundbreaking quality about The Birdcage is how removed it is from both illness and insensitivity. Whereas films preceding it were often somber stories about the tribulations of being gay in a conservatively straight world, Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May expose the fallacies of conservatism as traditional values are thrown into a more open-minded space. They don’t care how far the community has fallen so much as how high they can rebuild themselves.

Welcome to a special episode of the Incluvie Movie Highlights. This summer we held the Incluvie Short Film Festival. The film festival discovers and brings to light some outstanding short films starring main characters from diverse backgrounds, who are often overlooked in Hollywood. The filmmakers and actors from the 3 winning films came in and talked about their process and what it was like to make the film.

Animation as a medium of storytelling can be thought to be open to all ages and as I hope my readings will reveal, they could be interpreted as transgender stories.

A gentle coming of age story, Water Lilies takes its time in exploring what it’s like to be a young girl trying to make sense of her sexuality in a heteronormative world.

A film for the post-MeToo era that inverts the narrative with an ironic coda, Tár depicts the duality of a sensitive artist capable of great evil and vile manipulation.

It’s the most loving tribute to cinema and to Ingmar Bergman, set in world that feels so habitable that I felt like only re-watching this for eternity, because of how inviting it looks and feels.