Every month at the Paradise Theatre, curator and host Peter Knegt is offering queers (and anyone who loves them) a classic queer film, special guests and performers, and then — after the show — some good old fashioned drinks and conversation in the Paradise’s stunning lobby bar. Each film will be paired with a different local queer artist, who will design an original poster for the screening.
What better way to spend the night after Valentine’s Day than getting emotionally destroyed by Ang Lee’s gay Western masterpiece Brokeback Mountain in a theatre full of your fellow queers?
Infamously not the winner of the 2005 Academy Award for Best Picture (though it did win essentially ever other best picture prize that year), this adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short story of the same name is undeniably one of the most heartbreaking movies of the 21st century. Set in 1960s Wyoming, it stars Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in career-defining (and Oscar-nominated) performances as Ennis Del Mar and Jack “Nasty” Twist, two cowboys who begin a turbulent, years long affair when they spend a summer herding sheep together on the titular mountain. Co-starring Michelle Williams (also Oscar-nominated) and Anne Hathaway (shoulda been Oscar-nominated) as their wives/beards (not to mention Anna Faris, Linda Cardellini and a very young Kate Mara), it’s a movie that was as great as everyone said it was in 2005, and still just as great in 2023. If you have not seen it — or even just have never seen it on a big screen — it is our deep pleasure to be presenting Brokeback Mountain as Queer Cinema Club’s February offering.
Brokeback Mountain’s lovely if-you-know-you-know poster -- which will be available for sale at the screening - was created by Toronto-based artist Jake Tobin Garrett.
Wednesday February 15th 8 PM/7 PM Doors