It’s day eight of the B&S About Movies April Movie Thon.

The Day of Silence is usually held every year on the second Friday of April. It is a student-led observance with the purpose of bringing awareness to the bullying of lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender students by taking a vow of complete silence for the whole day in a representation of the silencing of the LGBTQ+ community. While this year the event is on April 22, I felt that this would be the perfect day to explore movies that have representation.

April 8: Day of silence — The Day of Silence is a campaign that seeks to shed light on what many LGBTQ youth experience daily. Share a film that explores those themes.

All April long, we’ll have thirty themes as writing prompts. If you’d like to be part of it, you can just send us an article for that day to bandsaboutmovies@gmail.com or post it on your site and share it out with the hashtag #BSAprilMovieThon.

Here are some suggestions:

Knife+Heart (2018): Can the ultra male gaze of the giallo be subverted? Hell yeah. Knife+Heart is a revelation that can just as easily fit into the 70s best examples of the genre while being made in the here and now.

Wild Zero (1999): Wild Zero has a trans love interest for a CIS male way back in 1999. The moment when Guitar Wolf hears Ace, the hero, tell him about his dilemma with his potential lover Tobio, he shouts out: “Love has no borders, nationalities or genders! DO IT!” Fuck yeah Guitar Wolf!

Private Parts (1972): Leonard Martin said of this movie, “If Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls had co-directed by Alfred Hitchcock and John Waters, it would come close to this directorial debut by Paul Bartel.” It is all about another world that lives beyond our own and it is strange and sinister and wonderful.

Thanks to Bill Van Ryn (who suggested A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Night Warning and Fear No Evil), Logan-Ashley Kisner (whose article A Timeline of Transgender Horror is an inspiration; thanks for the recommendations of Diary of a Serial Killer, Wild Zero, Private Parts, Sonny Boy and The Snatchers), G.G. Graham who suggested Knife + Heart, The Hunger, Nadja, Make A Wish and Stranger By The Lake, and Emily Fear (who has been trying to get me to watch The Lure for years and also brought up Knife+Heart, What Keeps You Alive and All Cheerleaders Die) for their help with this. And hey — I’m a straight white male nearing fifty that just wants to learn and be open and help, so let me know where I’m wrong and what other films I should be watching.

What movie are you going to view?