The Camp Collection

The Camp Collection

"There is very little agreement on what is camp because camp is in the eye of the beholder... because of the spontaneity and individuality of camp, camp taste is always changing." —Esther Newton, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America

Where do the Queer films go when it's not Pride Month? Well, here in our Camp Collection, of course!

Enter a cinematic world where gender bends fluidly and artifice reigns, with films such as After Blue, Olivia, Please Baby Please, and Portrait of Jason.

Outrageous, poetic, and defiantly queer, between Bertrand Mandico’s phantasmagorias and Shirley Clarke’s vérité, each of these films orbit the idea of identity as a spectacle, as forms of survival, and of subliminal salvation.

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The Camp Collection
  • Dressed in Blue (Vestida de Azul)

    Directed by Antonio Giménez Rico • Documentary • 1983 • 98 minutes

    One of the best trans films you’ve likely never heard of, Antonio Giménez-Rico’s landmark 1983 documentary Dressed in Blue (Vestida de Azul) explores the lives and loves of a group of six transgender women living in Madrid in the...

  • After Blue (Dirty Paradise)

    Directed by Bertrand Mandico • Drama • With Elina Löwensohn, Paula Luna • 2021 • 129 minutes

    In a faraway future, on a wild and untamed female inhabited planet called After Blue, a lonely teenager named Roxy (Paula Luna) unknowingly releases a mystical, dangerous, and sensual assassin from her p...

  • Lemebel

    Directed by Joanna Reposi • Documentary • 2020 • 96 minutes

    Chilean performance artist, writer, anti-fascist, cross-dresser, and queer activist Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015) was a larger-than-life icon of his country’s gay liberation movement. In both his work and his life, he blended humor with spe...

  • Madam Phung's Last Journey

    Directed by Nguyễn Thị Thấm • Documentary • 2014 • 87 minutes

    A former monk who left monastic life because 'I saw beautiful fags praying, and felt like running away,' Madam Phung is a canny businesswoman who got her start as a singer, and saved her money in the form of gold bars she would bury i...

  • My Best Part

    Directed by Nicolas Maury • Drama • With Nicolas Maury, Nathalie Baye • 2020 • 112 minutes

    Nicolas Maury (Netflix's "Call My Agent!", Knife+Heart) stars in this Cannes Official Competition coming-of-age dramedy as Jérémie, a hypersensitive struggling actor with an uncontrollable green-eyed monst...

  • Olivia

    Directed by Jacqueline Audry • Drama • With Edwige Feuillere, Simone Simon • 1950 • 96 minutes

    OLIVIA is a remarkable work by one of France’s first ground-breaking female filmmakers, which easily merits rediscovery today after being neglected for almost 70 years. 

    Plunging the viewer—and the ma...

  • Please Baby Please

    Directed by Amanda Kramer • Drama • With Andrea Riseborough, Harry Melling, Demi Moore • 2022 • 95 minutes

    Suze (Andrea Riseborough) and Arthur (Harry Melling) live an outwardly traditional lifestyle as the Lower East Side’s most bohemian Eisenhower-era couple. The pair’s cage is rattled when th...

  • Portrait of Jason

    Directed by Shirley Clarke • Documentary • 1967 • 108 minutes

    On the night of December 2, 1966, Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. There, for twelve straight hours they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang, donned costum...

  • Rebels on Pointe

    Directed by Bobbi Jo Hart • Documentary • 2016 • 90 minutes

    Exploring universal themes of identity, dreams and family, REBELS ON POINTE is the first-ever documentary film celebrating the world famous Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo. The notorious all-male, drag ballet company was founded o...

  • Saturday Night at the Baths

    Directed by David Buckley • Drama • 1975 • 82 minutes

    Newly restored in 4K, David Buckley's landmark excursion into bisexuality, 70s relationship politics, and the historical importance of gay bathhouse culture is celebrated in his 1975 film Saturday Night at the Baths. When struggling pianist M...

  • Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell)

    Directed by John Cameron Mitchell • Drama • With Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Justin Vivian Bond • 2006 • 101 minutes

    NSFW. Contains nudity and graphic depictions of sex.

    John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS explores the lives of several emotionally challenged characters as they navigate the comic an...

  • Solo

    Directed by Sophie Dupuis • Drama • With Théodore Pellerin, Félix Maritaud • 2024 • 101 minutes

    Simon (Théodore Pellerin) is a rising star in Montreal’s drag scene performing lively disco pop numbers weekly at his local club. Friendly with his fellow drag queens and supported by his sister, who ...

  • Venus Boyz

    Directed by Gabriel Baur • Documentary • With Mo B. Dick, Diane Torr, DRED, Bridge Markland • 2002 • 104 minutes

    Club Casanova, home of the legendary Drag King Night in New York City, is the point of departure for an iconic gender odyssey, where women become men – some for a night, others for a ...