Collections/December 2025

Queersighted: Sick & Dirty—Gay Cinema During the Code

Featuring a conversation between authors Michael Koresky and Mark Harris “Sexual perversion, and any inference to it, is strictly forbidden.” Thus spoke the Hollywood Production Code, the system of censorship that defined the limits of the permissible during the studio system’s golden age from the 1930s to the ’60s. According to such dictates, queer people simply didn’t exist. Nevertheless, during the decades of the Code at its most draconian, movies with gay and lesbian themes, undercurrents, and unmistakable desire made it to the screen. The new book Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness , by Queersighted series programmer Michael Koresky, takes a close look at this history. In this conversation, Koresky invites author Mark…

8 films — 1 on the Channel, 7 unavailable