Filmed at the time Hockney was painting Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, Portrait of David Hockney is made up of a limited number of shots, observing the periphery details of his flat and studio. Each view is held so as to focus on its particular qualities and composition and, with the accompanying so...

The first major British gay film, this study of a closeted schoolteacher who spends his nights cruising London's gay clubs in search of Mr Right defies categorisation. Both a fascinating glimpse into the 1970s scene and a portrait of an ordinary gay man living in a homophobic society, Nighthawks ...

Made thirteen years after Britain’s first major gay film Nighthawks, Strip Jack Naked puts the earlier film into an historical and personal context, with director Ron Peck drawing on his own journey from closeted suburban teen to politically radicalised filmmaker. A lucid account of the responsib...

A gay student looks forward to the freedom New York offers but finds himself falling for his male roommate in this short starring Raoul O’Connell, who also wrote and directed the film.

Anyone, gay or straight, can relate to the awkwardness of finding your way in college, although hopefully the...

Kay moves into a new flat and finds herself unexpectedly intrigued by the open sexuality of the lipstick lesbian couple next door. Surprised and turned on by the intensity of her feelings, she sets out to change her desire into reality. An erotic tale of voyeurism, power dressing and fantasy, cla...

Despite Harold Pinter's fear that Joseph Losey would turn his play into 'a completely homosexual picture', The Servant stands as one of the great critiques of British social and sexual mores. As power relationships between the classes fuel a sexual subtext about dominance and submission which goe...

The opening film in Terence Davies' powerful Liverpool-set Trilogy introduces Robert Tucker as a withdrawn young boy, bullied at school and terrorised by a violent father. His strict Catholic upbringing hinders his sexual awakening and as a young man he's still living at home with his mother. A v...

The anguished finale of the Terence Davies Trilogy opens with the death of Robert Tucker’s beloved mother, jumping forward in time to show an elderly Robert bedridden in hospital (an astonishing appearance by Steptoe and Son’s Wilfrid Brambell). Fragments of his past - a school nativity play, mal...

The second instalment of Terence Davies' masterful Trilogy finds Robert Tucker in middle age, with the clash of religion and sexuality taking its toll. A depressed loner who takes the ferry across the Mersey to work as an office clerk, Robert is haunted by nightmares of his own death and tormente...

Caught Looking sees a lonely gay man attempt to explore his sexual fantasies with the help of an interactive computer game, guiding his virtual reality persona through a series of potential encounters (a naval rough trade, a moustachioed ‘clone’, a retro ’50s muscle men) while offering wry commen...

The problems of showing the naked male body in all its glory are laid bare in this witty short. From the unabashed nudity on Grecian urns to the homoeroticism of 1950s muscle mags, this strange history is related by an unseen photographer as he snaps a naked male model, his kinky commentary full ...

Transience and desire, and the silence and concealment surrounding sexuality, love, death, AIDS, and the fear of bereavement, are all touched upon among a rush of abstract and allegorical connections in this artist film from 1990 by Anna Thew.

It is 1892, and Oscar Wilde (Nickolas Grace) is enjoying the company of his lover, Bosey, and other young men in a brothel. While he does so, workers put on an elaborate production of Wilde's banned play, Salome. In the play, King Herod begs his stepdaughter to dance for him, however, her mother ...

Bombay, 1962: Sera Kotwal (Souad Faress) gives birth to Brit (Firdaus Kanga), a boy whose bones are so brittle that he can just hiccup and break a rib. Based on Kanga's acclaimed autobiographical novel, Trying to Grow, Sixth Happiness is the funny, acerbic and moving story of a young man's sexual...

A unique and affecting tale of a disillusioned gay man who flees the city’s shallow scene, convinced that the facial birthmark in the shape of the eponymous island makes him terminally unattractive. Winding up on a rugged stretch of coast he forms a hesitant relationship with an eccentric, sexual...

Ostia is a fascinating short film directed by Julian Cole and produced for the Royal College of Art, which reconstructs the events leading up to the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Ostia relocates the proceedings to London and stars Derek Jarman as Pasolini. The film features an evocative dream se...

Etta is an elderly acrobat incarcerated in a care home. One night, a ghostly presence brings Etta into contact with Alice, a young night nurse. Etta discovers that Alice's touch brings ecstatic, disturbing memories to life, but Alice has a morbid fear of physical contact.

Set on a steam-shrouded railway station and shot in high-contrast black and white, Richard Kwietniowski's film lovingly twists David Lean's stiff-upper-lipped romance Brief Encounter into a rich and witty contemporary melodrama, with two devilishly handsome young men standing in for Celia Johnson...