The Hidden Buttock of the Male Nude (2024)
Contemporary artists decide to reverse the roles and represent fragile, graceful or strange male bodies, without hesitating to eroticize them.
Contemporary artists decide to reverse the roles and represent fragile, graceful or strange male bodies, without hesitating to eroticize them.
Marc MartinMarc Martin
Mathis ChevalierSelfArguing that advertising not only sells things, but also ideas about the world, media scholar Sut Jhally offers a blistering analysis of commercial culture's inability to let go of reactionary gender representations. Jhally's starting point is the breakthrough work of the late sociologist Erving Goffman, whose 1959 book The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life prefigured the growing field of performance studies. Jhally applies Goffman's analysis of the body in print advertising to hundreds of print ads today, uncovering an astonishing pattern of regressive and destructive gender codes. By looking beyond advertising as a medium that simply sells products, and beyond analyses of gender that tend to focus on either biology or objectification, The Codes of Gender offers important insights into the social construction of masculinity and femininity, the relationship between gender and power, and the everyday performance of cultural norms.

Set against the vibrant spectacle of the jaripeo, a symbol of Mexican cowboy tradition and machismo, this story unveils a hidden world of queer desire and quiet rebellion. As glances and gestures disrupt the rigid norms of masculinity, the rodeo becomes a stage for our protagonists to navigate identity, community, and the search for belonging in an oppressively traditional space.

In Man Made, Sunny tries to find out what society's ideas regarding masculinity entails. Does testosteron define your masculinity? Can men be victims? And do men suffer under these ideas? In the twentieth century, feminists have fought for the freedom of women and subsequently their emancipation. Is now the time for the emancipation of men, are they next to be set free?

The life of the bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey during a day of bullfighting, from the moment he dresses up to the moment he undresses.

They proclaim themselves masters of virility and seduce thousands of young Quebecers. Who are they? Journalist Simon Coutu delves into the world of influencers who claim the role of alpha male.

A documentary that brings to light the extraordinary story of the Sacred Band of Thebes – an elite military unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers that became one of the most formidable forces of the ancient world. It delves into the history of this little-known chapter of classical antiquity through forensic archaeology, rare archival material, ancient art, and animation. It explores how the Sacred Band rose to prominence, met its tragic end, and continues to resonate in modern discussions of identity, heroism, and love.

A male model's poses are accompanied by a photographer's narration exploring censorship, self expression and sexual desire.
Survey Marilyn Monroe’s life through photographs, from Hollywood stills to candid pictures snapped on the streets of New York.

Finnish men in sauna, speaking straight from the heart.

You could be forgiven for mistaking Charlie Siem for James Bond. Whether he's driving an orange Porsche to his cliff-top Monaco mansion, ordering martinis or looking suave in a designer suit, he is a man on a mission. It isn't to hunt down SPECTRE, but to find perfection in everything he does. Whether it's performing on stage, recording albums, or selecting a suit, Charlie demands the best, of himself and others. Despite an entourage dubbed ‘Charlie's Angels', he's lonesome, and complains that people can't relate to him. Danish filmmaker Eva Mulvad, with patience and panache, delves into this life of privilege to find commonalities of ambition and desire.

What makes a voice “gay”? A breakup with his boyfriend sets journalist David Thorpe on a quest to unravel a linguistic mystery.

What does mean to be gay and be a man? There's no straight answer for sure. From the Castro culture of the 1970s to today’s Bears and gym rats, this fascinating investigation of gay men and sexuality blows the lid off old stereotypes and showcases a battalion of interviewees including muscle men, rodeo riders, rugby players and cops. The men speak candidly on topics from homophobia to metrosexuality to embracing effeminacy as they reveal what it means to be a gay man in America today.

Welcome to the curious, surprising and always outspoken world of straight men who go Gay4Pay. Curiously, there is a disproportionate percentage of men working in gay porn who identify as straight. Why would a straight man do gay porn? What motivates him to try this or make a career of it? Why is there such keen interest and debate into the sexuality and personal lives of these men? And what does it say about us, the viewer that so much of gay porn is dominated by images of straight men?

Aslam sells medicines for sexual problems on the pavements of Meena Bazar near Jama Masjid in Delhi. Khalifa Barkat presides over an wrestling gym (akhara) in the adjacent park and puts a group of young men through the moral and physical grind of wrestling. Through the park and the market pass hundreds of men every day. Majma explores the instability of working class lives and its impact on male sexuality and gender relations.
Barni tells a thought-provoking story about life and art.
Produced by Campfire Video in 1989 to accompany their book, Movie Buff Checklist: Male Nudity in the Movies. (5th ed.), this is the complete guide to male nudity in cinema from the silent era through to the teenmovies of the eighties.

Provocative, feminist critique of man’s technological progress.

Why are men two or even three times less likely than women to be diagnosed with depression? Why are the figures reversed between the sexes in suicide statistics—some 47,000 people in Europe each year, more than three-quarters of whom are men? In men, the signs may differ from those generally identified with depression: anger rather than sadness, hyperactivity (at work or in sports) rather than asthenia, antisocial or addictive behavior, greater difficulty in asking for help due to modesty or shame, etc. But whatever form it takes, mental suffering is still often overlooked by those affected, misdiagnosed by many practitioners, and therefore generally underestimated.

A daring group of male celebrities volunteer to bare all to raise awareness for prostate and testicular cancer testing and research.
A hard-hitting documentary that tackles head-on a controversial but increasingly alarming subject: young men's obsession with the perfect body, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs to achieve it. Once the preserve of top-level athletes, the use of anabolic steroids has become endemic among teenagers and young men with a passion for bodybuilding. Daring to tackle head-on the taboo of male beauty standards, Adonis offers a field investigation into the heart of this muscle-building machine, questioning the reasons behind and the physical, psychological and social risks of this race to the perfect body. As he stages his own vulnerability, the filmmaker lifts the veil on the scale of the public health crisis that is looming.