Daniel Theophanous

To this day, I still feel a close kinship with the disenfranchised, strung-out, narcoleptic gay hustler of Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho. The array of situationally afflicted feelings River Phoenix’s good-natured Mike is forced to endure, from alienation to degradation to neglect, are sadly emotions that resonate deeply still, looking back at my experiences as a gay teenager. As the film approaches its 30th birthday at the end of this month, I find it’s the perfect excuse for me to refl...

Director Lisa Immordino Vreeland assembles a mosaic of moods and beautiful imagery to detail the friendship between playwright Tennessee Williams and author Truman Capote.

Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani) is forever reprimanded by his dance teacher for his moves. They are just too soft, too fluid. “You need to be like a monument,” he yells. Merab finds it physically straining to adhere to the stern rules of the Adjarian duet, a type of Georgian folk dance. Fearful his graceful movements may betray him, Merab keeps punishing and pushing himself only to have his burgeoning sexuality surface when Irakli (Bachi Valishvili), a newcomer to the troupe, arrives.

In the titling of his remarkable film Moffie, an even more derogatory Afrikaans slang for ‘faggot’, director Oliver Hermanus makes an intention of reclaiming the word as a badge of honour rather than a precursor for shame. Based on the eponymous autobiographical novel by Andre Carl van der Merwe, a young Nicholas Van De Swart (Kai Luke Brummer) comes-of age through the hardship of conscription and institutionalised homophobia.

Hedge fund managers, beauty pageant tweens, plastic surgery addicts, and a perfect recreation of the palace of Versailles deep in the Florida swamp. Welcome to Generation Wealth, a new documentary film by Lauren Greenfield.

A Deal With The Universe released through Peccadillo Pictures is a poignant intimate journal of a trans man, Jason Barker, who makes a life-changing decision to stop taking testosterone in order to conceive a child, after numerous failed attempts and a breast cancer diagnosis hinders his partner’s Tracey chances of conceiving. We had the priviledge to interview Barker about his film.

Daniel Theophanous talks to director John Cameron Mitchell about the "lo fi punky feel" of How To Talk To Girls At Parties, his latest film, out now on DVD.

★★★★★
Inevitably Brandon Cronenberg’s films will be paralleled to that of his father, director David Cronenberg, the sci-fi body horror aficionado whose prolific work throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s influences the genre to this day. With Possessor, Cronenberg utilizes his paternal influences, but successfully surpasses them to create his own fully formed vision.

The London version of Sundance Film Festival was once again upon us for its 7th edition, featuring four days of films from the 30th May to the 2nd of June. Screenings where held at Picturehouse Central with a programme consisting of highlights from the parent festival that took place in Park City, Utah in January of this year.

A quarter-century since Sight & Sound's B. Ruby Rich introduced the term, Daniel Theophanous looks back at the New Queer Cinema and its brilliant flagship, My Own Private Idaho
I became aware of My Own Private Idaho, the year of Phoenix’ death, two years after the film’s release. Secretly reading my sister’s Just Seventeen magazines, I was enamoured by the film’s poster boys, River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, sprawled all over its pages on a regular basis. It was specifically an obituary featur...

For director Pedro Almodóvar, it’s always been the case of nothing is too sacred. No taboos have been left unturned in his unabashed representation of queerness – a staple in his filmography right from the beginning.

★★★★★

Dropped bang in the centre of a remote undisclosed Latin American mountain terrain, we find a gang of feral youths partaking in a peculiar fusion of intense military training by day and feverish debauchery by night.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The Souvenir is titled after a painting by Jean-Honore Fragonard of a young girl, named Julie, carving on the trunk of a tree whilst her attentive pooch looks on. Another, Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) is taken by her beau Anthony (Tom Burke) to see this painting at the Wallace Collection, in this sleeper autobiographical tale by director Joanna Hogg about a troubled relationship in her youth. Like the chipping away at the tree bark, through the layers and layers of sophisticated subt...

The Eurovision Song Contest and all its musical funfair is once again upon us this month, taking place in Tel Aviv, after Israel’s win last year with the song Toy by the artist Netta. The contest is split into three events, the first and second Semi Finals take place on the 14th and 16th respectively and the Grand Final on the 18th of May.