In the years between World War I and the rise of Nazism (1918-1933), Berlin became THE vibrant center of queer culture, artistic experimentation, and changing ideas about gender, sexuality, and identity. The cinema of the Weimar era blossomed in that spirit, sometimes playfully, often incendiary, and sometimes through darker stories of anxiety, repression, and violence.

This extra-special series brings together seven films that reflect the strange and exhilarating possibilities of the period, from madcap comedy to Expressionist nightmares, each offering glimpses into a society gingerly negotiating modern life through radical experimentation steeped in post-war psychological trauma.

Set between a haunted past and an uncertain future, these films were born from a world that was both liberating and extremely fragile. They remind us of how long people have been challenging the imagined boundaries of gender and sexuality, through seemingly endless cycles of repression—and how the freaks, gays, immigrants, and weirdos always seem to make the greatest art; determined still, to party.