NFTS Student Curates Season Of Screenings To Celebrate Pride Month 2026

June is Pride Month in the UK and the National Film and Television School is once again embracing the opportunity to celebrate with events and activities across campus. The Students Union kicked the month off with a spectacular Pride Party, with live bands and themed drinks! NFTS Student Support and Wellbeing have been working hard on a programme of activities to promote inclusivity, educate, share resources and celebrate our LGBTQ+ students, staff and allies.

In addition to these events, throughout the month, Film Studies, Programming and Curation MFA student Harry Benbow has carefully curated a season of screenings, exclusively for NFTS students, celebrating the rich tapestry of queer cinema that highlights important voices and stories.

“The films were selected with a desire to showcase the diversity of the queer community and highlight the high quality of this often ground breaking and under-seen work, with each feature depicting a different letter in the LGBT acronym.”

Harry Benbow

Screening every Thursday of June, the four impactful films will be introduced by Harry and preluded with a short film screening.

Find out about the 4 films selected below and add them to your June must-watch list!
 

The Watermelon Woman (1996) + Greetings From Africa (1995)

The Watermelon Woman is ground breaking as the first feature film directed by a black lesbian. Director Cheryl Dunye herself stars as a young lesbian filmmaker researching the history of a 1930s black actress who appeared as a ‘mammy’ archetype, all while navigating her own sexual and platonic relationships. The narrative serves the dual purpose of making history and preserving a (fictional) lost history.

Watch on Amazon Prime!

Weekend (2011) + Dream A40 (1965)

Shot by NFTS alumni Ula Pontikos, Weekend is a refreshingly naturalistic take on the intricacies of modern gay sexuality, following two men over one weekend as they forge an unexpectedly deep connection following a hook-up. Director Andrew Haigh had wide success with All Of Us Strangers, so showcasing his early lesser seen work felt important.

Watch on BFI iPlayer!

Passages (2023) + A Summer Dress (1996)

Passages charts a selfish filmmaker’s affair on his husband with a younger French woman. Director Ira Sachs mines equal measures of sensuality and sorrow out of these unpredictable and often unpleasant characters, and it seemed an obvious choice for its non-judgemental depictions of characters jumping from male to female partners.

Watch on MUBI or Amazon Prime!

By Hook Or By Crook (2001) + A Trans With A Movie Camera (2018)

Due to it's dire underrepresentation in cinema, discussions of trans film can often centre on audiences projecting transness onto characters who haven’t necessarily been written as such. So screening a slightly older piece of work by a trans filmmaker felt important to showcase that this work does exist and is out there to be discovered. By Hook or By Crook is both centred around and created by trans people, and its inclusion serves to not only showcase the work but also highlight the painful rarity of a film such as this.

Watch on YouTube!

It is incredibly important to showcase queer voices in media year-round. This selection, spanning decades, has been skilfully curated by Harry to platform often under-represented voices and under-appreciated talent.

Let us know what you think of this selection, and what films you are watching this Pride Month on our socials!