The newest edition of Altered Innocence‘s collection of short films is finally here with nearly four hours of LGBTQ and coming-of-age short films in two separately curated programs!
The Altered program is a wild blast of strange and transgressive visions with films about virtual love dolls on a revenge tear, twinks eager to be annihilated and a lesbian director obsessed with big boobs. The Innocence program is a more tender and subtle compilation of loveliness with tales about brotherly love, modern transgender life, intergenerational relationships and boys testing the limits of traditional masculinity.
Henri (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is a frustrated teenager living with his parents in a provincial French coastal town. When they drag him to the train station to bid adieu to his sister, Henri sneaks off to a secluded bathroom and interrupts a hustler named Jean (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) satisfying the masochistic desires of an older male client.
Henri falls desperately in love with the sexy criminal, but Jean evades Henri’s affections. Undeterred, Henri shadows Jean as he traverses the dark and dangerous underbelly of their sleepy village. But as he descends deeper and deeper into Jean’s world, there may not be an easy way out.
Adrift in a French underworld of hustlers and pick-ups, Patrice Chereau‘s 1983 drama The Wounded Man (better known internationally as L’homme blessé) is a revelation: an amazingly accomplished work that genuinely channels the transgressive, unsanitized sensibility of Jean Genet, boasting a breakout lead performance by young Anglade and a script that took co-writers Chereau and legendary gay French author and activist Herve Guibert six years to perfect.
The result is a rich, strange and sumptuous film – leading us to exhilaratingly mysterious and unfamiliar spaces both physical and psychological. It’s soon to be available once again on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD thanks to a brand-new restoration by the cult indie distribution label Altered Innocence.
Watch the trailer for the new restoration below and click here to pre-order your copy. The Wounded Man (L’homme blessé) will be available starting May 23rd.
Set against the backdrop of the last days of the French-Algerian war and amidst the lush landscapes of Southern France, Wild Reeds is a true gay cinema classic – a coming-of-age saga looking at the sexual awakening of four teenagers. The quartet discover sensual delights while grappling with inner-conflict and political differences.
Sensitive Francois (Gael Morel) and feminist-communist Maite (Elodie Bouchez) are in a somewhat stunted relationship, bonding over a mutual love for movies and rock’n’roll. However when Francois meets Serge (Stephane Rideau), a handsome muscular youth from the local farming community, he comes to acknowledge his latent homosexuality, while Maite is seduced by Henri (Frederic Gorny), a teenage exile whose political stance is in complete opposition to hers.
A powerful take on adolescent sexuality and social turmoil, Andre Techine‘s Wild Reeds is a poignant, moving and life affirming expression of teenage angst and triumph. The film has recently been restored by Altered Innocence for a brand-new special edition DVD and Blu-ray release in the United States.
Watch the new trailer for Wild Reeds below and click here to pre-order your copy. The film will be available on both DVD and Blu-ray starting this week.
Newly restored in 4K by the cult video label Altered Innocence, David Buckley‘s landmark excursion into bisexuality, 1970s relationship politics and the historical importance of gay bathhouse culture is celebrated in his 1975 film Saturday Night at the Baths.
When struggling pianist Michael (Robert Aberdeen) lands a job at the legendary Continental Baths in New York City, his wife Tracy (Ellen Sheppard) encourages him, even emphasizes how special this institution is. Michael, however, struggles with his own homophobia, yet starts developing feelings for his confident and sexually free co-worker Scotti (Don Scotti).
Shot on-location inside the famous Continental Baths and featuring an unforgettable 12-minute scene of the actual entertainment, both musical and sensual alike, Saturday Night at the Baths is a sublime example of the compelling and sensual queer cinema of one of the most groundbreaking periods in gay and bisexual film history.
Watch the new trailer for Saturday Night at the Baths below and click here to pre-order your copy. This new special edition will be available on DVD and Blu-ray starting October 25th.
No other filmmaker better embodied the spirit of the gay liberation movement than Arthur J. Bressan, Jr. (the director behind films like Buddies and Gay USA).
A true pioneer of queer cinema, his films fearlessly blurred the boundaries between the artistic, the erotic and the cinematic – and never so clearly as with his first two narrative films, the critically-acclaimed Passing Strangers and Forbidden Letters. Altered Innocence and the Bressan Project are proud to present these two landmarks of early queer cinema, newly restored in 2K from their original film elements with a host of new bonus features.
In Passing Strangers, a closeted gay teenager (Robert Adams) finds love, community and a political awakening when he decides to answer a personal ad from an older, jaded man (Robert Carnagey). One of cinema’s first coming out stories, Passing Strangers is a romantic portrait of gay liberation-era San Francisco that still resonates today.
Lead actor Robert Adams returns in Forbidden Letters as Larry, a man trying to pass time on the day his older lover Richard (Richard Locke) is set to be released from prison. Unable to clear his head through casual sex, he reads through his letters to Richard – letters he could never send out of fear that his outing would lead to a harsher sentence. As Richard’s release draws nearer, the question remains: will the spark still be there when he gets out?
Special features include audio commentaries, interviews with Robert Adams and various queer film historians, five early short films by Bressan (on the Blu-ray only), print materials, photo galleries, theatrical trailers, a twenty-page booklet featuring writing by Bressan and an essay by queer trans film critic Caden Mark Gardner (Blu-ray only) and much, much more.
Watch a trailer for Two Films by Arthur J. Bressan, Jr. below and click here to pre-order your copy. The amazing new collector’s edition will be available on DVD and Blu-ray beginning June 8th.
Horny monsters, erotic dancers, lonely youths, mourning lovers and people who just wanna party. The short cinema of Yann Gonzalez is full of unique islands with exciting characters, gorgeous cinematography and sonic arenas.
Before he made the acclaimed queer giallo homage Knife+Heart, these short films would go on to win Yann a devoted cult following and awards at festivals. Working closely with the director, the cult video label Altered Innocence has compiled seven of his short works here as a main program (many newly restored in HD) and an appendix of music videos and other works.
Also included in this amazing new collector’s set is the English-language Blu-ray premiere of Gonzalez’s first feature film You and the Night. Featuring characters like The Stud, The Teen, The Slut and The Star as guests at a pansexual orgy, You and the Night is an erotic and wild take on The Breakfast Club with each character baring their inner souls to the group to find acceptance and love. An original score by M83 sets the dreamy and transcendent tone for the eternal night.
Watch a new trailer for The Islands of Yann Gonzalez below and click here to pre-order your copy. The collection will be available on Blu-ray beginning May 31st.
Fred Halsted was a legend in his own time. His self-created public persona-that of the leather-clad sadist-instantly made him both feared and revered as one of the first openly gay sex symbols. And his taboo-shattering films broke new ground in the gay erotic cinema for their portrayal of sadomasochism and other forms of polymorphous perversity.
These works sent a shockwave throughout the fledgling gay liberation movement and the art establishment alike, leading to their eventual acquisition by the Museum of Modern Art. But despite their significant cultural importance, these films have long been available only in neutered form, if at all.
Altered Innocence and Anus Films are proud to present the first-ever uncut disc release of the groundbreaking and fiercely controversial films L.A. Plays Itself, Sextool and The Sex Garage, beautifully restored by MoMA and with a host of new bonus features, including Halsted’s formerly-lost second feature, Truck It.
The collection also includes audio commentaries, interviews, photo galleries, original theatrical trailers, a 2-page booklet filled with essays and much, much more.
Originally released in 2006, Wild Tigers I Have Known was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival and LGBTQ film festivals around the globe, but didn’t quite attract the same attention as similar contemporary films like Mysterious Skin, Thirteen or The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. That’s a shame because Wild Tigers I Have Known is a true queer coming-of-age indie gem that seems ahead of its time 15 years later. It’s hard to imagine a film like it being made today, yet it feels completely essential at the same time.
The film follows Logan (Malcolm Stumpf), a middle schooler who is crushing on an older classmate named Rodeo (Patrick White). As the pair spend time together, Logan’s infatuation grows. Exploring gender fluidity for the first time, he invents a female persona and starts making sexually provocative phone calls to Rodeo at night, hoping to get even closer to the object of his affection.
For the film’s 15th Anniversary, cult indie label Altered Innocence has put together a restored version of this experimental queer classic on DVD and Blu-ray and packed it with tons of exclusive special features.
Watch the new trailer for Wild Tigers I Have Known below and click here to order your copy. The new special edition is available now on DVD and Blu-ray.
Originally released in 2006, Wild Tigers I Have Known was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival and LGBTQ film festivals around the globe, but didn’t quite attract the same attention as similar contemporary films like Mysterious Skin, Thirteen or The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things. That’s a shame because Wild Tigers I Have Known is a true queer coming-of-age indie gem that seems ahead of its time 15 years later. It’s hard to imagine a film like it being made today, yet it feels completely essential at the same time.
The film follows Logan (Malcolm Stumpf), a middle schooler who is crushing on an older classmate named Rodeo (Patrick White). As the pair spend time together, Logan’s infatuation grows. Exploring gender fluidity for the first time, he invents a female persona and starts making sexually provocative phone calls to Rodeo at night, hoping to get even closer to the object of his affection.
For the film’s 15th Anniversary, cult indie label Altered Innocence has put together a restored version of this experimental queer classic on DVD and Blu-ray and packed it with tons of exclusive special features.
Watch the new trailer for Wild Tigers I Have Known below and click here to pre-order your copy. The new special edition will be available starting October 26th.
The kick-ass cult video label Altered Innocence has been dedicated to releasing LGBTQ and coming-of-age films with an artistic edge since their inception in 2015. With a library of features and shorts from around the world – mixing genre with art-house and everything in between – Altered Innocence is committed to curating an esoteric library that is without peer in the current cinema landscape.
Nearly three hours of LGBTQ and coming-of-age short films and music videos await you in the debut of Altered Innocence‘s cinematic mixtape supreme: Altered Innocence: Vol. 1! Films from established auteurs like Peter Strickland (The Duke of Burgundy, In Fabric), Cam Archer (Wild Tigers I Have Known), João Nicolau (From John) and Yann Gonzalez (You and the Night, Knife+Heart) join fresh new voices such as Alexis Langlois, Shaun Hughes, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel. Cruising, dancing, naked wrestling, trans terrorism, first love, bullies, femme faltales, band practice and much, much more is in store!
Watch the trailer for Altered Innocence: Vol. 1 below and click here to order your copy. The collection will be available on DVD and Blu-ray starting this week!
