Licensed to Kill (1997)

Directed by

Arthur Dong

Genre

documentary film, LGBTQ-related film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 17m

Rating

4.5 of 10 from 6 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A gay filmmaker interviews six inmates who killed people because of anti-gay prejudice. The documentary explores the reasons behind their violence without offering easy answers.

confrontationalsoberinganalyticalpersonaldisturbingreflectiveunsettling

What happens

Licensed to Kill is a 1997 documentary written, directed, and produced by Arthur Dong, in which Dong, a gay man himself, interviews six inmates who committed murder for reasons related to homophobia. It is the third film in a series of documentaries where Dong explores anti-gay prejudice, and was the only film at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival to win two awards, the Directing Award Documentary and the documentary Filmmaker's Trophy. It received Best Documentary at the 23rd Seattle International Film Festival. Dong cited a near-miss in 1977 with homophobic violence as an impetus for the project; the teenagers whom he and his friend largely evaded attacked two priests, Jim Brown and Douglass McKinney, shortly afterward just outside of the Castro District, San Francisco. In discussing the subject matter of the film, Dong specifically stated that the documentary covers "straight attitudes about homosexuality". He also said that he specifically did not present a single solution to the dilemmas highlighted in the film. The film is preserved in the Library of Congress, and was included in the curriculum of Concordia University's Fall 1999 "Film Studies: Representation and Sexuality" course. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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