The Celluloid Closet

Based on the book by Vito Russo, a VHS essay straight out of the incendiary 1990s, which delighted in cinema exploring sexual identities: from Gregg Araki through My Own Private Idaho to Paris is Burning. From the very heart of the best decade of the 20th century – as Americans like to say – comes a documentary that tells the story of the displacement, coding, and gradual emancipation of queer heroes and heroines in Hollywood cinema. We will see Tony Curtis, Shirley MacLaine, Whoopi Goldberg, and Tom Hanks, as well as excerpts from classic films which, amazingly, were once considered the norm. The Celluloid Closet is, however, a bittersweet tale because it runs parallel to the fight for visibility of those suffering with AIDS. Viewed from today’s perspective, it is a postcard from the nineties – a decade that had so much to offer, but now, in hindsight, appears as a time of continuing turmoil.

Patrycja Mucha

Restored in 4K by Sony Pictures Classics in collaboration with UCLA Film & Television Archive and Mk2 at MTI Film laboratory from the original 35mm interpositives.