Leviticus is coming! Easily one of our most anticipated films of the year, we are beyond thrilled to be teaming up with Elevation Pictures for a special preview screening of Adrian Chiarella’s queer horror film at the Paradise Theatre on June 11th at 7pm, a week before it hits cinemas. And Chiarella will be joining us after the film a virtual Q&A!

One of the breakout films of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Leviticus follows two teenage boys (played by Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen) who must escape a violent entity that takes the form of the person they desire most: each other.

Met with raves at Sundance (Variety said it “marries blood-curdling fright with incisive social commentary,” while The Guardian called “smart and surprisingly romantic”), you’re gonna watch this one with a (big, queer) crowd.

Tickets here (get ‘em fast).

As part of our annual Pride celebration, join us for a lively conversation on the evolution of LGBTQ+ storytelling in film and television. ​

From groundbreaking stories like Schitt’s Creek, Sort Of, and Wildhood to a new generation of queer narratives reaching global audiences, LGBTQ+ representation on screen has transformed dramatically over the past two decades. But as visibility grows, important questions remain around authenticity, inclusion, and who gets to tell these stories. ​

Join Canadian Club Toronto on June 8 for a panel discussion exploring how queer narratives have evolved from the margins to the mainstream, the cultural impact of that shift, and what’s next for storytelling. Moderated by Judy Lung, Vice President, Strategy, Communications & Stakeholder Relations, TIFF, the discussion will feature insights from:

• Damon D’Oliveira – Producer and Partner, Conquering Lion Pictures

• Peter Knegt – Writer, Filmmaker, and Award-winning CBC Arts Producer and Journalist

• Michelle Mama – Award-winning Filmmaker, Producer, and Founder of GAY AGENDA

GET YOUR TICKETS

*A portion of the ticket proceeds will go to Rainbow Railroad

**The livestream for virtual guests will begin at approximately 6:00pm ET & a link will be provided closer to the event date.**

Pride Projected: Celebrate Pride with three special events hosted by some of our favourite local queer film icons. We asked Saffron Maeve, Michelle Mama and Peter Knegt for some non-fiction queer cinema to share with audiences throughout Pride Month.

Peter Knegt, host of the monthly film series Queer Cinema Club and the Canadian Screen Award-winning talk show Here & Queer on CBC, selected Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s The Celluloid Closet:

“30 years ago, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman gave all of us fascinated by the intersection of film history and LGBTQ history an extraordinary gift in their documentary The Celluloid Closet. Covering a century of queer representation —for better and very much for worse — on the silver screen through footage of 120 films and interviews with everyone from Whoopi Goldberg to Harvey Fierstein to Gore Vidal (not to mention Lily Tomlin, who also serves as the film’s narrator), this film is perhaps one of the most entertaining history lessons ever put on screen. It’s also a tribute to the late, great activist and author Vito Russo, whose lectures, film clip presentations and 1981 book The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality at the Movies collectively made the movie possible.” – Peter Knegt on The Celluloid Closet

What That's Entertainment did for movie musicals, The Celluloid Closet does for Hollywood homosexuality, as this exuberant, eye-opening movie serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Lily Tomlin narrates as Oscar-winning moviemaker Rob Epstein (The Times of Harvey Milk and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt) and Jeffrey Friedman assemble fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s. Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Curtis, Harvey Fierstein and Gore Vidal are just a few of the many actors, writers and commentators who provide funny and insightful anecdotes.

Tickets here.

Are you ready for Blue Film, Toronto? Because we sure are ready to show to it you.

On 6/6 at the Paradise, we are teaming up with the folks at Obscured Releasing for the Toronto premiere of one of the most provocative queer films to come around in some time: Elliot Tuttle’s Blue Film.

Following a fetish camboy (Kieron Moore) whose meeting with a masked client (Reed Birney) turns into shocking night of revelations, Blue Film needs to be seen to be believed:

“Scarier than any straight horror this year” -i-D

“Featuring scenes that would leave even Gaspe Noé gasping”- Deadline

“A daring queer film from a fearless and intelligent new voice” - The Hollywood Reporter

“I personally watched this film terrify the indie film ecosystem” -Mark Duplass, who was a consulting producer on the film.

So join host Peter Knegt to be the first audience in Toronto to experience what will not be something you’ll soon forget. Also it’s only 82 minutes long so you can be out for dinner or a night on the town by 7:30!

Tickets on sale here. Get em quick!

Get ready to kick off your Pride month by getting dragged, gays. Because the late great queer cinema legend Rosa von Praunheim has some tea to spill in his 1971 classic It Is Not The Homosexual Who Is Perverse But The Society In Which He Lives… and it’s still piping hot 55 years later.

An all-out assault on the complacency of white gay men, in particular, this film is radical, bold and vicious (but a whole lot of fun, we promise). It also… basically started a revolution. Like for real.

Attacked by German conservatives, progressives and gay activists alike upon release (what other film can say THAT?), the film is credited as conceiving of the idea of homosexuality as a political identity. It also resulted in dozens of gay activism groups forming to the left of older organizations. Many films have been called revolutionary, but It Is Not The Homosexual Who Is Perverse But The Society In Which He Lives really truly was: It essentially became the foundational text of the German gay rights movement!

It was also the breakout film from von Praunheim, who would become one if the most influential queer filmmakers, authors and activists in both Germany and the world. From the late 1960s to the early 2020s, von Praunheim made over 150 films (!) that worked to redefine the meaning of queer liberation over and over again. He was an absolute legend, and we just lost him on December 17th of last year. This won’t just be a screening… it will be a celebration of him.

It will also be a celebration of another radical and bold artist, except this one is both still very much alive and will be joining us in person for a performance before the movie: Vivek Shraya. Or, rather, it will be Shraya’s alter ego Vivica who is joining us. Self-described as a horny, chaotic, shapeshifting nepo baby, you are not prepared for what Vivica has in store for us.

So, really, we feel like we are offering you an absolutely iconic way to start your Prides: Rosa von Praunheim and Vivek Shraya? Plus you can pick up a copy of this incredible poster by Andrés Garzon. All at the Paradise on June 3rd at 7:30pm, with your host Peter Knegt. Tickets here.

Queer Cinema Club After Dark is back for Round 3! 🌚

On May 27th at 9:15pm, join series curator and host Kevin Greenspan for the first ever Canadian theatrical screening (!) of Juliana Rojas & Marco Dutra’s lesbian creature feature Good Manners (As Boas Maneiras).

Good Manners follows Clara (Isabél Zuaa), a woman who takes a housekeeping job for the wealthy Ana (Marjorie Estiano), whose pregnancy takes some unexpected turns (read: gay and read: scary) that give Clara more than she bargained for in more ways than one.

A clever and inventive mix of urban fantasy and body horror, Good Manners is a gnarly but surprisingly sweet exploration of queer parenthood and queer adolescence – and did we mention lesbians? This movie has it all.

Tickets available at paradiseonbloor.com 

Queer Cinema Club is a community partner of Canada’s largest LGBTQ film festival Inside Out again this year, and our screening is the world premiere of Nick Butler’s Lunar Sway!

In this dark, quirky comedy, we follow the handsome Cliff (Noah Parker) through a series of misadventures—sexual, romantic, familial, criminal, and otherwise—in the small desert town of Mooncrest.

Cliff spends his days making neon signs, thinking about his ex-boyfriend, quietly borrowing money from his parents, and sparring with his therapist. His routine is upended when a woman (Liza Weil, Gilmore Girls, How to Get Away with Murder) arrives in town claiming to be his birth mother. Close behind her comes another woman (Grace Glowicki), who claims to be a bounty hunter and warns Cliff that nothing is as it seems. What follows is a coming-of-age story with a surreal, dreamlike edge, drifting through a world of seedy motels, unexpected sexual encounters, low-level scams, and some truly stellar fringed cowboy shirts.

Q&A after with director and cast, moderated by Peter Knegt. Tickets here!

Our birthday trilogy concludes with a night you’re gonna wish you could turn back time to join if for some reason you decide to miss out: On May 20th, we are celebrating the one and only Cher on the night of her big 8-0 with a screening of her breakout film role, 1982’s Come Back To The 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean!

Directed by the late, great Robert Altman, the film follows a group of old friends who reunite on the anniversary of James Dean’s death to have a very boozy night of absolute unraveling. Cher and her costars (truly an Avengers lineup if you’re gay and over 40: Karen Black, Sandy Dennis and a baby Kathy Bates) deliver the kind of legendary actressing that will make you want to scream in delight.

The film also notably offers trans representation that while not without its problems (it was 1982), still possesses a humanity and grace that Hollywood barely ever even manages 44 years later. If you have already seen JIMMY DEAN, you know what we’re talking about. If you haven’t? We got you, babe.

The film will be proceeded by both a Cher lookalike contest (with amazing prizes!) and a special tribute performance by drag artist Hot Honey Ham. We’ll also have printed copies of this beautiful poster by Keight MacLean, who has made all three of the gorgeous posters in our birthday trilogy.

Tickets available here.

Careful! She spreads easily! Kingston drag legend and Toronto "nobody" Mimi Osa is finally ready to bring her special brand to the Queen city, returning to the stage from her brief semi-retirement. Those closest to her have described her as "uncomfortably abrasive", "needlessly unrelenting", and Toronto's own HQ has noted she's "completely infectious"!

In this new show, each performer will take the stage to (hopefully) inflict laughter on an audience held hostage - I mean, captivated! Expect stand-up, sketch comedy, comedic lip sync numbers, and a foolish game or two (No Jewel involved). Join Mimi as she embarks on a quest to quantify and validate the queerness of four lucky performers - she does have a degree in Gender Studies, after all. Do they have a Sphynx cat for a pet? Do they own Tegan & Sara's "Sainthood" on vinyl? Have they completed treatment for an STI in the past 2-4 weeks? All these questions and more will help Mimi and the audience to determine just how queer these people really are!

Hilary Yass is a multi-award winning stand up, sketch and improv comedy drag queen comedienne. She mixes the Golden Girls with Carol Burnett, but rarely at the same time - and is also her own secretary! With improv talent, sketch writing panache, and stand-up comedy chops, this tireless self-producer has created many LGBTQ+ improv, sketch and comedy shows! Appearing on Season 4 of OutTV’s Camp Wannakiki along with other famous drag performers she ended up placing as a RUNNER-UP! Other credits include Just For Laughs Toronto, The Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival, and GayAF Comedy.

Coyote Ugly is a magic spewing, space age drifting, witchy bastard, born and baptized in cigarette smoke, brought to Toronto for one purpose: to bite the hand that feeds.As the World's Premier Psychic, Necromancer, and Liar, Coyote has had the privilege of performing in and out of the village, as well as co-hosting and producing “Kings of Kensington” and Toronto Fringe 2025 favourite “Frathaus: EVICTED!”

Peter Knegt is one accomplished homosexual! He's been hosting the CBC series "Here & Queer" since 2022, which celebrates the work of LGBTQ+ artists through unfiltered conversations. He also curates the film screening series "Queer Cinema Club" with the Paradise Theatre in Toronto, coming up on its 69th edition this April.

Sucka Queen is a Toronto-based drag performer known for hosting high-energy events including drag brunches, trivia, and crazy chaotic themed shows! With Sucka, you never quite know what you're gonna get - and that's a good thing!

Mimi Osa has been performing in drag for over a decade, and was instrumental in building a now thriving diverse drag community in Kingston, Ontario where she produced shows of all kinds before relocating to Toronto. Mimi made history as the first drag queen to perform at the Royal Military College of Canada, became the poster girl for the 2018 ReelOut Queer Film Festival, and had a string of very successful and very sold out one-woman shows called "Off the Record" before her departure from the Limestone city.

Show starts at 8pm. GET TICKETS

*If you're a queer identified comic or performer of any kind and would like to see yourself represented on a future lineup, send Mimi a DM on Instagram: @mimiosaqueen. She's always looking for fresh talent to exploit!

**If ticket cost is a barrier to access, please let the organizer know and they can make an attempt to accommodate.

Get your cha cha heels ready! Because we are finally showing the absolute mayhem that is John Waters’s Female Trouble!! And the occasion couldn’t be more apt: not only is April 22nd the 4th anniversary of Queer Cinema Club and our 69th (!) screening, but it’s also John’s 80th birthday!!

So join us at the Paradise to celebrate the Pope of Trash himself with a screening of what is arguably his magnum opus. Starring Waters muse Divine as the iconic Dawn Davenport (in what John has called the very best showcase of Divine’s talents), Female Trouble is a hilariously sordid pseudomelodrama that skewers everything from fame and beauty standards to abortion and capital punishment.

Made in 1974 for just $25,000, we cannot think of a better way for us to both turn 4 years old and raise a glass to John turning 80 than showing this masterstroke of trash. And by inviting the wild talents of Allysin Chaynes on stage to give us all a little John Waters drag tribute before the movie. There also will be a John Waters lookalike contest with some really perfect prizes judged before the show (although we are sorry: none of those prizes are cha cha heels). So save that date!

Thank you so much Keight MacLean for this gorgeous poster, which will be available for purchase at Paradise before and after the movie. Tickets now available here.

YOU’D HAVE TO BE A FOOL TO MISS THIS SHOW! Come have some great midweek laughs – NO PRANKS, WE PROMISE!

Hump Day Comedy is delivering the cheeky mid-weeky laughs you need to level up your week! Advance tickets are under $20! 

Wednesdays are hard, so Gay AF Comedy is serving Toronto’s top comedians to get you over the hump with laughs that will put a spring in your step! 

This month features some Gay AF faves, so you know it’s gonna be good!

DAPHNEY JOSEPH
ROBERT WATSON
PETER KNEGT

Headliner TAMARA SHEVON (JFL, Zoofest, CBC Comedy, SiriusXM)

Hosted by MICKEY DYKEMAN

Gay AF always delivers a great show, grab your friends (with consent) and come join the funny!

Online - $18, door - $23

On the evening of March 15th, Paradise Theatre is going to be throwing our fourth annual Oscar viewing party – and you are cordially invited to join us. Hosted by Peter Knegt, this Oscar party is going to have everything: drinks, food, incredible prizes, a best dressed contest, a good old fashioned Oscar prediction pool, and of course, a live screening of the awards themselves up on the big screen where they belong.

The Oscars start at 7 PM, but the doors to the Paradise will open at 5 PM. Come early and fill our your predictions ballot, get yourself a few small beers, watch the red carpet and show off your own look.

The best dressed contest will be judged at 6:15pm, and the category once again is: your fashion interpretation of the nominated films. This beautiful poster by Paul Twa might give you some ideas, whether it’s serving us Marty Supreme or One Battle After Another or Sinners or Weapons or even Sentimental Value (last year we had several people come in incredibly inventive costumes based on The Brutalist, so creativity is key!). We invite you to take this as literally or non-literally as you’d like. Just have fun with it… though also please avoid offensive cultural appropriation!

Tickets on sale now at paradiseonbloor.com. Get em quick because all 3 of our previous Oscar nights have completely sold out, and with good reason: it’s the best time! (NOTE: It is currently sold out, but tickets may become available! Follow our Instagram stories for updates).

Old chums, it’s time for us to put down the knitting, the book and the broom and make our way to the Kit Kat Club. For our dear Liza Minnelli is turning 80 years old!

On March 11th, we will all say willkommen, bienvenue, welcome to Bob Fosse’s 1972 masterpiece Cabaret in celebration of the Oscar-winning performance at its heart: Minnelli as Sally Bowles. And because this will go down on the eve of Minnelli’s birthday, we will also be graced with a special tribute to her from the wonder that is @thedianasauss. That’s not all: we invite all in attendance to come dressed inspired by Liza, with great prizes handed out to those whose interpretations are deemed the most thoughtful!

This screening will kick off a trilogy of birthday parties for three great queer icons all born within a few months of each other in 1946: Liza, John Waters (who we’re celebrating April 22nd with Female Trouble) and Cher (who we’re celebrating May 20th with Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean). And we’ve asked the extraordinarily talented portrait artist Keight MacLean to design the posters for all three. This is the (absolutely stunning) first, which will be available in print for purchase at the screening: March 11th at 7:30pm at the Paradise.

Tickets now available!

It really doesn’t get better than The Birdcage, and we’ve been saving it for a time when it felt like we realllly needed the boundless joy it has on offer. And the middle of this doomy winter of 2026 feels like it might be that time? So let us pierce that toast together a month from tomorrow when we finally show Mike Nichols’ ridiculously entertaining ode to coming as you are!

Released 30 years ago this winter (on March 8, 1996, to be exact), The Birdcage, stars one of the greatest casts ever assembled (Robin! Nathan! Dianne! Gene! Hank! Christine! Calista?) and marks the very first cinematic collaboration between director Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May, who were a legendary comedy duo in the 50s and 60s.

All of this added up to absolute gay Miami magic, and audiences agreed: it grossed a stunning $185 million, making it by far the highest grossing LGBTQ-themed movie of all-time (a record it held for over 20 years… until a great tragedy occurred and it was beat by Bohemian Rhapsody 🤮).

One of the most quotable, re-watchable and all-around delightful movies we’ve ever been gifted, we are truly so, so excited to screen it at @paradiseonbloor this February 18th. And we’re just as excited to both have Polterguy offer up a Birdcage drag tribute before the show, and for Tim Singleton to have designed this gorgeous poster that will be for sale in the lobby before the show. Get your tickets! 🦩🦩🦩

🔪❤️‍🔥 Mark your calendars: Queer Cinema Club After Dark returns for a second edition on February 12th with a screening of Yann Gonzalez’s Knife+Heart.

Set in the gay porn scene of late-70s Paris, Knife+Heartfollows producer Anne (Vanessa Paradis), heartbroken after being left by her girlfriend, who finds herself at the centre of a mysterious murder spree when a masked maniac begins killing off her performers one by one – with an extremely on-theme weapon. Horny, violent, and tragic in equal measure, Knife+Heart is a deliciously queer spin on the giallo subgenre.

One night only at @paradiseonbloor, Feb 12 at 9pm, with an introduction by series curator Kevin Greenspan (who also made the poster!). Tickets available here.

We are very excited to announce that on February 9th, Queer Cinema Club will be teaming up with our friends at Photon Films to host the Toronto premiere of *the* queer film of the new year: Harry Lighton’s Pillion!

Essentially the gay BDSM rom com (dom com?) of our dreams, Pillion follows a timid man (Harry Melling) who is swept off his feet when an enigmatic, impossibly handsome biker (Alexander Skarsgård) takes him on as his submissive. Funny and sexy and surprisingly tender, we are so excited to offer you the opportunity to be the first public audience in this city to see this incredibly special film.

So save the date: Monday, February 9th, with the screening starting at 6pm sharp (doors open at 5:30 and try to arrive by 5:45 please). QCC curator Peter Knegt will be hosting the festivities, and tickets are available here. They will likely go fast, but if you miss out or aren’t in Toronto (or want to see it a second time, which you will!), don’t worry: Photon Films will be releasing the film in Canadian cinemas on February 13th.

Way back in 2023, Toronto-born budding queer cinema legend Emma Seligman teamed up with the extraordinarily dynamic duo of Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri to bring us the instant LGBTQ comedy classic that is Bottoms. And in this first month of 2026, we are bringing Bottoms back to the screen where it belongs!

Starring Sennott and Edebri as two high school senior girls who start a fight club as a way to hook up with cheerleaders, Bottoms is absurd and audacious and wildly unapologetic. And is also absolutely best seen with a big queer crowd. Which is what we will be doing come January 26th at 7:30pm. And we will be preceding it with another incredibly funny film directed by a brilliant queer Canadian filmmaker, Andy Reid’s short film Testing.

So let’s have a hilarious January Monday night together at the Paradise Theatre! We’ll surely need it by then. And thank you so much to H.E.E.S.H. for designing this wonderful poster, which will be available in print for purchase that night. Tickets here!

Shall we kick off 2026 by taking a trip to Club Silencio? And better yet, into the elusive, singular mind of our dearly departed David Lynch? 

On January 14th, we are finally showing Lynch’s luscious, loony, mesmerizing masterpiece Mulholland Drive, 25 years after it became early frontrunner for film of the 21st century (a status it still holds). Whether you’ve seen it a dozen times before or this would be your first foray (in which case, buckle up!), let us come together at @paradiseonbloor and take in the spirit of one of cinema’s ultimate legends on the eve of the anniversary of his passing, and a few days before what would have been his 80th birthday. 

And if that isn’t somehow enough to entice you out on a mid-January’s night, the film will be preceded by a special Mulholland Drive drag tribute care of a legend in her own right, Lucinda Miu!

Tickets available soon at paradiseonbloor.com, and thank you so much to Duy Lawrence Nguyen for designing this gorgeous original poster, prints of which will be available for sale that night.

Tis the season to… sit in a movie theatre together and cheer on our favourite 11 year old ballet dancer. Because on December 10th at the Paradise, we are closing our ‘25 program by celebrating the 25th anniversary of Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliot!

Starring Jamie Bell in maybe the greatest performance an adolescent has ever given on screen (he should have won an Oscar for it, and thankfully did win a BAFTA!), Billy Elliot follows a working class boy fighting gender norms in 1980s England. Thankfully he has a little help from his dance teacher Sandra (Julie Walters, also that year’s rightful Oscar winner we are sorry to Marcia Gay Harden), who helps Billy find a way to be brave enough to be himself.

Warm and sweet and funny and heartbreaking, we’ve decided Billy Elliot is also a Christmas movie (there is in fact Christmas in it!) and we know you will too after you join us next month. We will also be having a special Billy Elliotinspired performance from Clarke Kuntt before the show, and you can pick up a physical poster of this perfect original poster made by our friend Paul Dotey! Get your tickets here.

For Queer Cinema Club’s second trip to Prince Edward County, there was no question that of what film we had to screen: Todd Haynes’s 2015 masterpiece Carol, in honour of both its 10th anniversary… and the Christmas season.

Adapted from Patricia Highsmith's 1952 novel The Price of Salt (via a flawless script by Phyllis Nagy), the film stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara (both deservedly Oscar-nominated) as two women who start a forbidden affair in 1950s New York City. 

Carol is arguably the best Christmas movie ever made. It’s also a gorgeous, spellbinding film that will never quite leave you after you're done watching.  Get your tickets here!

It’s the 30th anniversary of Todd Haynes’s masterpiece Safe! Come see it on the big screen!

40 years ago, we were gifted one of the great lesbian romances of cinema. On November 10th at Paradise we will celebrate that and watch the wonder that is Desert Hearts together.

Adapted from legendary Toronto queer writer Jane Rule’s 1964 novel, few films have had a greater impact on lesbian culture than this one. Actress Jane Lynch has said that she had “never seen in celluloid such real passion and desire between two women” and that she watched it more than 50 (!) times.

Directed by Donna Deitch and starring Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau, Desert Hearts follows the romance between two women in 1959 Nevada. What results is so intimate and nuanced it’s almost shocking it was not only made in 1985 but given a wide release in theatres (where it made decent money!).

If you haven’t seen this film, THIS is your chance. If you have seen it once or even 50 times before (come join us, Jane!), you know how extraordinary it is and why revisiting it is always such a pleasure.

Tickets now available at paradiseonbloor.com. Please note our new 7:30pm start time!! And thank you so much Martha Newbigging for this absolutely lovely poster, which will be available for purchase (via special Riso prints!) at the screening.

We are so incredibly excited to be teaming up with Tommy Dorfman and Lionsgate to offer you all a chance to be part of the Toronto theatrical premiere of Dorfman’s deeply charming directorial debut, I Wish You All The Best. 

What’s more, Dorfman will be in attendance for a Q&A afterwards with QCC curator Peter Knegt! Monday, November 3rd at 8:30pm.

A coming-of-age story based on the best-selling book by Mason Deaver the film follows a high school junior (Corey Fogelmanis) who comes out as nonbinary and is thrown out of their family’s home. They end up moving in with their estranged older sister (Alexandra Daddario) and her husband (Cole Sprouse), and after enrolling in a new school, find support from an eccentric art teacher (the one and only Lena Dunham) and form an unexpected bond with a kindhearted student (Miles Gutierrez Riley). 

A sweet and funny journey of self-discovery that celebrates the power of being true to yourself, I Wish You All The Best heralds a new cinematic voice in Dorfman. And we will all come together to wish her all the best when she joins for us for this very special screening.

Tickets now available at paradiseonbloor.com (get ‘em quick!). 

Attention, queers: something wicked this way comes 😈🔥🔪

On October 30th, join us for the very first edition of our new quarterly sidebar series: Queer Cinema Club After Dark!

Hosted by Kevin Greenspan, QCCAD will showcase horror and genre films that elevate queerness beyond subtext and give us the gay goods up front. And in the spirit of Halloween, we’ve got something special lined up for our inaugural screening…

The place: West Hollywood. The year: 2004. And if that wasn’t scary enough already, a mysterious, devil-masked muscle daddy is on the loose, slicing his way through WeHo's Gay Halloween festivities. This is HELLBENT, a hidden gem that’s been dubbed the first true gay slasher – and a sexually liberated milestone of queer representation in horror.

Never before screened theatrically in Toronto, Hellbent will grace the Paradise for one night only on October 30th – Devil’s Night – at 9:15pm. Tickets available here. Poster by Kevin Greenspan.

Part two of our two part October celebration of Al Pacino is a film we have been waiting to play since the day this series started: William Friedkin’s infamously polarizing, often disorienting and totally electrifying Cruising (1980). A film that 45 years later still needs to be (repeatedly) seen to be believed, it stars Pacino as a New York City cop who infiltrates the city’s underground gay scene to try and find a killer. 

Leather is everywhere in this film, and we hope it will also be everywhere at in the cinema when we screen it. Since it will be a few days before Halloween, there will be a Cruising costume contest (with some great prizes) for the most inventive homage to the film. Not only that, the night will kick off with Dank Sinatra performing a tribute to the film that we promise cannot be missed.

Part one of our two part October celebration of Al Pacino is Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Sidney Lumet’s breathtaking rollercoaster of a masterpiece that basically screams “Trans Rights!” in a manner few films of its era (or even several eras after it) ever had the courage to do. Based on a true story, it stars Pacino as a man who is attempting a bank heist in an effort to pay for his wife’s gender transition surgery. As riveting as it is deeply moving, Dog Day Afternoon holds up so fucking hard a half century later.

Tickets now available at paradiseonbloor.com

We are kicking off our fall series by going back to 1965 and screening Canada’s OG queer film: a 4K restoration of David Secter’s truly pioneering Winter Kept Us Warm!

Made for $8,000 with a cast that entirely worked for free, Winter Kept Us Warm was shot via guerrilla filmmaking tactics mostly on the downtown campus of the University of Toronto, where Secter was a student at the time. It was a major breakthrough for its depiction of queer characters as fully dimensional, and even became the first English-language Canadian film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival. 

David Cronenberg, who was a classmate of Secter’s at the time, has cited the film as a major influence on him, saying: “I can’t say that the University of Toronto led me to horror, but why it did do was lead me to cinema… Winter Kept Us Warmis the most influential film of my life in a weird way.”

With *many* special guests joining us both in person and virtually (more on that to come), save September 29th to come down to Paradise and kick off a fall series that will be very anniversary heavy. You can also pick up a copy of this gorgeous poster by Amy Noseworthy, which perfectly encapsulates the mood of this extremely special film. Tickets here!

Tender, deranged and totally singular, the great Miranda July’s Kajillionaire was the one of the very best films of 2020… but too many of us might have been a little too distracted to notice. So we are bringing it back to the big screen this September in all its be gay do crime glory.

Featuring a truly astounding physical performance from Evan Rachel Wood, Kajillionaire follows a family of con artists (Wood alongside the legends that are Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins) whose lives are complicated when a stranger (Gina Rodriguez) enters their schemes. What evolves from there is a heartfelt and hilarious take on family and loneliness that only July could deliver. 

So come join us on September 17th at the Paradise for the conclusion of our four part series on some of the great queer films released during the pandemic, when you can also pick up a physical copy of this beautiful poster created by Karolina Ficek.

On August 20th, join us for an extraordinary film destined to become a beacon in the history of trans cinema: Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Franca.

Released in the ill-fated summer of 2020 (when few of us were watching anything other than mind-numbing reality television), Lingua Franca does something no other film really ever has: it captures — with remarkable nuance and complexity — the anxieties of our current actual reality when it comes to both trans rights and Trump-era immigration policies.

Starring Sandoval herself as an undocumented trans Filipina immigrant who becomes romantically involved with the grandson of the elderly woman she is the caregiver for (played by the late great Lynn Cohen), Lingua Franca is a heartfelt, gripping film that announces Sandoval as a cinematic force. It’s also a movie that very much deserves to be seen in a theatre, and we are so excited to be giving you all that opportunity.

Thank you so much Simon Ip for creating this lovely poster, which will be available for sale at screening. See you all at the Paradise Theatre in a few weeks! Tickets available here.

You may have heard of revered jazz musician Billy Tipton, who rose to fame in the 1940s and ‘50s, but it’s unlikely you know the whole story behind him. It’s actually quite possible that what you think you know about him is tainted with the vicious transphobia that was unleashed by the mainstream media after his death in 1989. Which is one of the many reasons you should come to our August 11th screening of Chase Joynt and Aisling Chin-Yee’s extraordinary documentary No Ordinary Man.

One of the best films — queer or otherwise — to come out during the peak of the pandemic, No Ordinary Man essentially reimagines Tipton’s narrative through a diverse group of contemporary trans performers and experts. Blending recordings, archival and present-day interviews, and the performers’ interpretations, the film provides a necessary dialogue about transmasculinity — something even the recent surge in trans representation and storytelling hasn’t done nearly enough of. 

We are so excited to screen No Ordinary Man in a cinema, a place few have been able to see it since it was released when most of them were shuttered. We’re even more excited that many members of the cast and crew will be joining us in person for a Q&A, and that the great Chris E. Vargas made this wonderful poster for us (which will be available in print at the screening).

Tickets now available at paradiseonbloor.com. See you August 11th at 8pm 🎹🎹🎹