South African LGBT - Movies, documentaries and short films from South Africa

Set against a political backdrop in Africa, the story spanning several years, unfolds around the powerful interaction between two women, their strong sexual allure, and their search to find meaning through it all.

The movie follows three rapists in South Africa, who live in a rape culture. Sexual, verbal, political, moral and psychological rape is common practice.

During the time of apartheid Nelson Mandela drove around South Africa in a limousine disguised as a chauffeur while organizing the armed struggle against the apartheid regime. But who was the distinguished looking white man sitting in the back seat? Meet Cecil Williams, an acclaimed gay white theatre director and communist.

A history of homosexuality in South Africa from colonial times to the present. Estimates say that between 1910 and 1933 over 60,000 men were convicted of sodomy. They were overwhelmingly black and unable to afford legal representation.

Dark and Lovely, Soft and Free follows a network of queer hairstylists and their friends through small towns, rural areas, and urban peripheries in South Africa. A project of the Gay and Lesbian Archives of South Africa, the 2000 film was linked to co-director Graeme Reid's doctoral research on hair salons as gay social and cultural spaces. Presenter Zakhi Radebe travels thousands of miles through the provinces of Gauteng, Mpumalanga, the Free State, the Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal. On this road trip they and the audience meet stylists who are also preachers, chorists, traditional healers, beauty queens, and socialites. Through them, viewers discover the creative possibilities for creating queer spaces in the South African countryside. The documentary provides a vision of acceptance and celebration, in contrast to the dominant homophobia in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Metamorphosis is a documentary that explores the life of one of South Africa's most outrageous and vibrant characters - Granny Lee. By outfitting herself with over-the-top costumes, heavy makeup, a foul mouth and a passion for the nightlife she became the most notorious denizen of Johannesburg's decadent clubland in the seventies and eighties. The story of Granny Lee is a fascinating journey that merges the personal with the political. It is a life of illusion, glamour and struggle in the shadow of the racial and sexual repression of Calvinist Apartheid. Come on in, have a drink and discover the legend of Granny Lee - the granny you'll wish you had.

Zackie Achmat is an HIV+ South African activist campaigning to make AIDS medications more widely available. As one aspect of his campaign the HIV-positive Achmat refuses to take the medications until they become available to everyone.

Bev Ditsie, and Simon Nkuli are South African gay rights activists. This is the story of their lives, their meeting, and their efforts to get sexual orientation into the new South African Bill of Rights.

An interracial gay love story set in early 18th century South Africa about two men -- a black prisoner living in a Cape Town penal colony and a Dutch sailor -- who weather injustices as a result of their affair.

This documentary examines the lives of five men looking for money and a sense of belonging in the harsh streets of Johannesburg.

Insights into the lives of South Africa's black lesbians.

Controversial South African political satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys allows writer/director Julian Shaw into his previously off-limits inner world. The result is a startling document of Pieter's work educating school children about their country's greatest threat, HIV/AIDS, and an unforgettable portrait of the power of individual will.

"Difficult Love" is an intimate, thought-provoking portrait of internationally celebrated South African lesbian photographer, Zanele Muholi, and her highly personal take on the challenges facing black lesbians in South Africa today. The film features interviews with Muholi as well as with her friends, colleagues and peers, and provides a compelling overview of the artist, her life and her work. This poignant documentary takes us behind the façade of art making and shares with us the highly political environment Muholi must navigate in order to bring her lush photographs to light.

Hazendal farmhands Pietie, Hope and Rollie are not your typical Western Cape wine workers. Hope aspires to winning the local drag beauty pageant, Rollie is the raining queen of the pageant and dreams of finding a husband, and Pietie struggles with his religious upbringing while obsessing over his roses, chickens, and pigeons. These three trans-gender wine workers confront prejudice at every turn from their farming community, city trans-genders and the world at large. Roger Horn's film manages to find the fabulous in the fraught and offers a portrait of triumph in togetherness rather than loneliness in victimization.

Portrait of a closeted gay husband/father living a life of quiet middle-aged desperation who becomes fixated on a friend's handsome collegiate son, leading to an incident.

An one hour documentary that interweaves three stories of South African lesbians who adopt across racial lines. The film explores the ways in which these queer families challenge and are challenged by the traditional hierarchies of race and heterosexism that are still deeply entrenched in the South African psyche.

An experimental look at sexual identity, redemption and grace - The Prodigal tells the tale of a young man, Mark, caught between two worlds; the world of his Christian father and that of a beguiling young man, Dean. This state of decision is depicted on screen by the vivid white beach where Mark is seen walking - alone, isolated and searching. His search leads him deeper into the waters of the ocean, even as he delves deeper into Dean's world. This parallel visual interpretation provides a unique and important look at the issues that face our young generation, and the question that Mark - and each one of us - must face in this life. Are we ever in something so deep, and so far, that it is impossible to get back to shore?

With the Rainbow Nation forged by Nelson Mandela, a nation for everybody regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation was supposed to be created, where the homogeneous society of apartheid was to be abolished. Today 2013, it is clear that everything did not turn out as planned, in spite of South Africa's progressive constitution. Cape Towns homophobia is spreading out, from the skyscrapers of the inner city to the shacks in the townships. The newspapers regularly shock the people with cases of lesbians being raped and murdered. Lesbophobia presents a number of women's rights activists who share their life stories and show us the reality of violence by confronting the foundation of religion, culture and the heavy segregation still present.

The film portrays the lives of two gay men and one transgender woman who left their home countries because of discrimination and persecution. Now in South Africa they applied for refugee status on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Despite the fact that in South Africa both national laws and international human rights laws protects lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and inter-sex (LGBTI) individuals against any form of discrimination. Flavina, Mussa and Junior have encountered several challenges in their new communities. The film is an emotional personal journey that shows how stigmatization, persecution and violence have turned the protagonists into human rights activists.

Whitney is a police officer whose long-term girlfriend Palesa, is violently raped and murdered. When Whitney finds out she goes on a manhunt to find the perpetrators. Her commanding officer takes her off the case because she's getting too emotional. Whitney takes some time off and goes on a binge of drugs and alcohol. Through one of her binges she discovers that one of the effects of heroine is hallucinating. She begins to explore it more and more, the more vibrant the hallucinations the more she needs to take. When getting back to work she discovers that her colleagues did not find the perpetrators and in fact were told to close the case. As the subject matter didn't coincide with her Captain's mandate. She then takes it upon herself to solve the crime and in doing so is fired. She does however solve the case and figures out who killed Palesa, they were four men. Subsequently she hunts them down but due to her drug abuse she isn't as careful as she should have been and is caught. The judge determines that she should not be sent to prison but instead a mental institution.

The story outlines the lives of the gay and lesbian experience and relationships in a contemporary South Africa.

Xolani, a lonely factory worker, travels to the rural mountains with the men of his community to initiate a group of teenage boys into manhood.

In an Afrikaner stronghold obsessed with masculinity, emotionally frail Janno's mother takes in hardened orphan Pieter, wanting them to be brothers. A power struggle ensues between the contrasting boys over heritage and parental love.

Drafted into the South African army during apartheid, a young soldier joins the military's travelling choir, and romance on the battlefield causes him to deal with his long-repressed sexual identity.

A young man in 1981 South Africa must complete his brutal and racist two years of compulsory military service while desperately maintaining the secrecy of his homosexuality.