Best movies like Lady with Lipstick

A look at the mystique of road movies, combining interviews, film clips, music, photography, literature and a narrative storyline featuring Paul Rudd and Tom McCarthy.

Khush means ecstatic pleasure in Urdu. For South Asian lesbians and gay men in Britain, North America, and India, the term captures the blissful intricacies of being queer and of color. Inspiring testimonies bridge geographical differences to locate shared experiences of isolation and exoticization but also the unremitting joys and solidarity of being khush.

Now one of the world’s most celebrated artists, Yayoi Kusama broke free of the rigid society in which she was raised, and overcame sexism, racism, and mental illness to bring her artistic vision to the world stage. At 88 she lives in a mental hospital and continues to create art.

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

A former child star buys her grandmother's house to rescue it from ruin but her hope for serenity is soon eclipsed by haunting dreams of her famous grandmother, who died of a supposed overdose in the house more than 30 years ago.

A young beautician, newly arrived in a small Louisiana town, finds work at the local salon, where a small group of women share a close bond of friendship and welcome her into the fold.

Writer and Adderall enthusiast Stephen Elliott reaches a low point when his estranged father resurfaces, claiming that Stephen has fabricated much of the dark childhood that that fuels his writing. Adrift in the precarious gray area of memory, Stephen is led by three sources of inspiration: a new romance, the best friend who shares his history, and a murder trial that reminds him more than a little of his own story. Based on the memoir of the same name.

A slice of life story that follows a large Italian family on Christmas Eve as they prepare for the traditional Feast of the Seven Fishes, reminisce about the past and seek love in the future.

The deterioration of a small community in Fogo Island is forcing its inhabitants to leave and resettle. Places once occupied by humans are now becoming part of the tundra landscape. In spite of a condemn future, there are some residents who decide to remain, holding on to their memories and grieving for the past, when life in Fogo was different.

Lulu Monahan, the press agent for John Barrymore, is attempting to get a sponsor for a radio program. To that end, she and the agent for bandleader Kay Kyser, plant a story that the great Shakespearean actor, over his heartfelt objections, will teach Kyser how to play Shakespeare, which isn't the same as playing Paducah, which soon becomes evident.

Upon his release from prison, an ex-convict returns to his beloved city of Genoa, and to his lover.

In the seaside town of Boulogne, no one seems to be able to cope with their past, least of all Hélène, an antique furniture saleswoman, her stepson Bernard, and her former lover Alphonse.

In the huge steel factories in Terni (Umbria, Italy), two friends: Mario and Pietro, fight for the love of the same girl, Gina. Pietro dies because of a work accident at the factory. The other workers think Mario is responsible for the death of his friend. Mario, who is innocent, is forced to quit, but his love for Gina and his dedication to his job help him out of his crisis.

Carl and Jessie are half siblings who feel trapped by the existential and economic pressures of living in the small mining town of Canaan, Ohio. Their shared rebellion soon takes on the form of an illicit love affair depicted in interwoven sequences of lusty poeticism and ethnographic vérité. When Jessie becomes pregnant, the tension between the couple’s youthful vitality and the dire realities of rural society leads to consequences both despairing and hopeful.

Tommaso is the youngest son of the Cantones, a large, traditional southern Italian family operating a pasta-making business since the 1960s. On a trip home from Rome, where he studies literature and lives with his boyfriend, Tommaso decides to tell his parents the truth about himself. But when he is finally ready to come out in front of the entire family, his older brother Antonio ruins his plans.

In 1972, officer Frank Serpico exposes the corruption which poisons the roots of the NYPD and becomes famous in 1973 when director Sidney Lumet tells his story in the classic film “Serpico,” starring Al Pacino.

Friends, enemies, acquaintances, and family of porn star John Holmes recall their experiences with him, from his childhood to his eventual death from AIDS in 1988.

This documentary film tells the dramatic story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple living in Virginia in the 1950s, and their landmark Supreme Court Case, Loving v. Virginia, that changed history.

An 1890s New Orleans heiress tries to buy a married doctor's love with her tainted family fortune.

A vivid assortment consisted of three acts taken from the lives of modern 1960s Italians, always in orbit around the restless theme of sexual inhibition and the pursuit of pleasure in sex.

Matt Morrison gets his old college chum Frank Stewart a job at the steel foundry where he works. Trouble quickly ensues.

When a brilliant crime writer investigates a 40-year-old murder, he confronts a small town's worst fears.

Three generations of women in a Mexican American family experience sexual awakenings over the course of a summer.

Three women who share a familial bond but little more come to know each other better in this beautifully-photographed drama. Marie-Madeleine (Sylvie Drapeau) is a photographer in her mid-30s who, for the first time, has come into contact with Mado (France Arbour), her biological mother, who put her up for adoption shortly after she was born. Marie-Madeleine is to take a long road trip for a magazine assignment, and she invites Mado along. Joining the two women is Marie-Madeleine's daughter (Isadora Galwey), who has yet to meet her German father. The three women share their thoughts and ideas as they travel through an idyllic setting to photograph birds. Les Fantomes des Trois Madeleine was shown at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival as part of the Directors Fortnight series.

Hannah and Rachel grew up as little girls in the same small Midwest town, where traditional gender expectations eventually challenge their deep love for one another.

A group of workers from the south of Italy live collectively in Milan, where money isn't everything, it's the only thing, in 1974.

A young girl and her brother come of age at their great grandmother's house in Virginia during the 1940s. After a family tragedy, a young girl moves from New York with your younger brother to live with their great grandmother on a Virginia farm and comes closer to understanding the land and roots that inspired her father's writings while discovering herself, the love of family, and the power of truly believing.

The story begins on a fine summers morning, when San-woo and his mother board a bus to the country. It is soon clear that the unsophisticated rural passengers annoy the seven-year-old urban boy. His mother is taking him to live with his 78-year-old mute, but not deaf, grandmother while she looks for a new job after a business venture failed in Seoul.

Set in the late 1960s, the film explores the issues of immigration, community values and family devotion through the eyes of a young girl, Lucia, who is left behind with her grandmother while her parents emigrate to France to find work. Lucia pains to be with her family as she struggles to learn her role in the tiny, traditional village under the watchful guidance of her stern grandmother.

In 1950, the small Calabrian village of Caulonia still numbered nearly 15,000 souls, but there now remain no more than a few hundred. A phlegmatic old man and a young disabled woman are among the last inhabitants who haunt the deserted village. They seem to be waiting apathetically for their end and resemble the old boat abandoned on the shore. Il Dono is the story of those who have left, told by those who have stayed; a tale of disaster and exodus.

A forty year old woman, who has been in an asylum, goes to live with her brother's family. She proves incapable of adapting herself to family life, takes refuge in the country alone with her memories, and is later returned to the asylum.

Marina, Sofía and Violeta are three teenage sisters who have just suffered the loss of the grandmother who raised them. Each one will live the mourning in her own way, in a house inhabited by a myriad of memories, responsibilities and tensions.

Benedetta, an obese fifteen-year-old yearning for attention, lives in a tawdry province in the south of Italy, emblematic of her inner landscape where everything could be and yet is not. She falls in love with Armando, aka Amanda, a young transvestite who is attracted to the young girl's innocence and begins an unhealthy relationship of mutual dependence with her. Amanda runs a carousel at the fair across the street from Benedetta's house, and the girl is magnetically drawn to this colorful and exciting world. But Amanda not only runs the carousel, she's also a call boy and sells drugs. Between intoxication and family rebellion and the discovery of sex - a great disappointment - she completes her rite of passage into adulthood.

Life on the Rock never seemed easy, but for Mitsy it is especially rough. The teenager has been abandoned by her mother, a particularly unfit parent prone to both the bottle and the sex trade. She is left to be brought up by her mercurial grandmother Bride, who is well-meaning but oppressively suffocating. Mitsy's dreams for the future hinge on her desire to be a hairdresser, but her current emotional well-being revolves around a wee dog named Sparky, an unwanted canine misfit to whom she becomes hopelessly attached. After Bride agrees to let Mitsy take the dog in as a pet, the teen tries desperately to create a happy, safe place for Sparky to thrive.

The film evolves around questions of identity, popular memory and culture. While focusing on aspects of Vietnamese reality as seen through the lives and history of women resistance in Vietnam and in the U.S, it raises questions on the politics of interviewing and documenting.