Todd Verow
On February 17, 2020, Charles Lum woke up seeing double. A week later his doctor called with news that a “mass” in his brain was HIV related lymphoma. DEATH RACE is a video diary which documents Charles Lum's catastrophic health struggle during the coronavirus crisis.
A tribute to Charles Lum’s life told through his work as a film maker. Featuring Super-8 films Charlie shot as a teenager in the 1970s up to the last film he made about his battle with AIDS related lymphoma. Charlie AKA Clublum was a much-loved and valued member of our queer and film community, whose films defied the taboos and stigmas of sex, sex in public places and sex with HIV. His films embody a quirky earnestness and a wacky and wicked sense of humor and always the utter delight and pleasure of another body.
Based on filmmaker Charles Lum's own experience of going to a gay beach as a young man and almost having sex for the first time.
Scott is still sleeping with his ex-boyfriend and floundering through life when his mother calls to tell him his older sister Maggie is in the hospital with a brain tumor. Scott rushes to be by her side. As she lies unconscious he remembers the times their lives intersected. She was a party girl, a popular girl, she got around. Scott imagines what Maggie would say but ultimately realizes that you can never truly know anyone and decides to take a chance on love and life.
A world-weary gay man remembers lost lovers as he swims from the Christopher Street Piers in New York City to Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Shot on super8 film using single frame photography, Covid Summer condenses all the anxiety, insanity, and stir-crazy sexual tension of the summer of 2020.
SHOW HARD: short films by Charles Lum & Todd Verow Award winning short documentary and narrative films about gay sex and cruising. including: TOM'S GIFT BEEN TOO LONG AT THE FAIR SECRET SANTA SEX PARTY! BLOW JOB 2017 DAVY & GOLIATH I HAVE MIKE PENCE'S DICK IN A PICKLE JAR. WANT TO SEE IT? A NIGHT AT THE HOIST Charles Lum, aka clublum, received his MFA in Photography from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago after 25 years scouting & managing film locations. His short videos have screened internationally in museum, art and film venues. Todd Verow attended the Rhode Island School of Design and the AFI Conservatory. He made his feature film debut with "FRISK" in 1996. (Sundance, Berlin & Toronto.) At Bangor Films, Todd has directed over 25 features and numerous shorts, establishing himself as the most prolific auteur emeritus of the New Queer Cinema. Charles & Todd have also co-directed the feature documentaries “AGE OF CONSENT” and “SEX & The Silver Gays.”
In the 1970s, the golden age of gay pornography in New York City, a promising chorus boy is injured and told he will never dance again. Distraught and unimpressed with the "art" films playing seedy Times Square theaters, he gets his friends and lovers together and they start making their own hardcore movies. Against all odds the films are wildly successful until drugs, AIDS and cheap video technology bring it all crashing down
Three young artists; a trans opera singer/dj, a middle eastern American performance artist and a gay film maker, share a tiny studio apartment while they look for love and fame in NYC. They scrimp and save and scam and steal their way from month to month somehow they survive but in the new world shared economy they are just one click away from losing everything.
In New York (and other cities all over the world) LUXURY apartment buildings are going up everywhere. For one year, filmmaker Todd Verow documented several buildings. The finished film, with a haunting soundtrack by the filmmaker, offers a non-narrative mediation on the meaningless of the word LUXURY which is used to describe basic shelter. When everything is LUXURY then nothing is LUXURY. As the gap between the haves and the have-nots becomes a black hole sized chasm there is only LUXURY or the streets, nothing in between.
An afternoon visit to a small city Sex Shoppe yields excitement, surprise and comic relief.
A group of older gay men get together every month for companionship, camaraderie, and sex.
Serial killer 'NO1KNOWS' managed to elude the police for years. In fact they didn't even know he existed until, by chance, his video and audio recordings were found. By examining the recordings police were able to solve a number of murders around the world - although many men featured in the recordings were never found and it is unclear how many other victims there were since most of the video and audio recordings were destroyed (presumedly by NO1KNOWS himself).
V, an older trans woman, is desperately trying to hold on to her rent stabilized apartment in New York City.
A group of older gay men get together every month and have sex parties.
An experimental feature film about people in different cities who are trying to escape their loneliness through love, lust or a combination of both. The film was shot in real locations using only available light. The viewer is both a voyeur - watching the characters in intimate situations that are not meant to be seen - and an active participant - imagining what the characters are going through and making connections between them that may or may not be real.
The Fair theater in Jackson Heights, Queens is one of the oldest continually running gay establishments in New York City. A loyal patron of the Fair tells the history of this gay porno theater and how it has managed to stay open while all the other gay porno theaters in New York City shut down. The narrator recalls the sexual encounters he had there over the last 35 years.
The story of the HOIST, London's first and only Gay Fetish Bar, coincides with the political struggle to decriminalize homosexual activity within the United Kingdom.
Three Parisian women discover that their lives are delicately interconnected to a mysterious fourth woman, who remains tantalizingly out of reach.
A very special shipment of tainted pork arrives in Santa Fe, N.M., transforming anyone who eats it into a brilliant, but psychotic, braniac -- including a dimwitted bimbo and a punk botanist who can now hear her beloved plants.
Filmmaker Chase Hook committed suicide on December 31st, 1979. His conservative family destroyed all of his films. Recently Super 8 home movies of his last summer on Fire Island were found. Also recovered was the tape from his answering machine.
A documentary about gay male cruising and public sex and how it has changed over the years.
Inspired by true events, Todd Verow’s Tumbledown is an explosive cocktail- an emotional rollercoaster ride through the dark sides of sexuality. A complicated love triangle develops after hunky Jay meets bartender Nick and invites him to spend the weekend with him and his partner in their country cabin. Soon, copious amounts of sex, drugs and alcohol lead to a dark obsession and even darker complications. Always bold and never less than riveting, Tumbledown is sure to leave you breathless.
Voice-over narration describes Tom's Gift, a sex shop in rural America closed by municipal ordinance.
Two men embark on an unconventional romance in Todd Verow's sexy Parisian-set drama. Claude finds a young man passed out in the street and, taking pity on him, decides to take him to his apartment to safely sleep. Awakening the next morning, the sexy stranger soon makes a play for his forty-something host, kick-starting a passionate romance. But will the chance meeting develop into more than just lust or will the pair's differences drive them apart? An accomplished, serious and very modern gay romance .
Musical theater legend Jacob Sterling is looking for a for another big break that will get one of his shows on Broadway finally.
An emotionally and sexually charged journey through the love, addiction, and friendship of two men. Documentary filmmaker Erik and closeted lawyer Paul meet through a casual encounter, but they find a deeper connection and become a couple. Individually and together, they are risk takers—compulsive, and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity and to be true to himself.
In Fucking Different XXX, the passion for explicit sex scenes brought eight international filmmakers together. The eight short films shot in Paris, Berlin and San Francisco are about intensive sex, quick sex, romantic sex, funny sex, the first sex, and the last sex. The range goes from a lesbian quickie in the toilet, a bloodthirsty orgy, romantic fisting all the way to wet teenage dreams. The result is a never seen before look upon sexual tastes and varieties, far from clichés, with a fresh and sometimes humorous approach.
Sex and drugs-getting hooked and getting off –can be addicting. For Drew (Brad Hallowell), eking out a mundane life in Waterville, Maine, it is resisting the illicit pleasure in New York; for Mistress Datina (Philly), it means operating a sex and drug den to cope with her life. In his visually and sexually stimulating film, director Verow introduces multiple characters and overlapping narratives that portray the physical and emotional faces of addiction. For Rob (newcomer Rob Ordonez), drugs and sex are means of finding a bed to sleep in every night – while they provide Christian (Michael Vaccaro) a means of dealing with his helplessness and loss. A writer records these characters and their unforgettable stories. The themes are universal, but the possibilities are endless.
In Paris X (Judy Minx) cruises the Tuileries for sex. X hooks up with Y (*JAMES). Have they met before? Will they meet again? Y suppresses a knowing smile and that is enough for X. A lesbian version of CRUISING filmed at the infamous gay male cruising site in the Jardin des Tuileries in front of the Louvre in Paris, France.
A lonely man hires a male prostitute to spend the weekend in New York City with him.
When 30 something Sean meets Eastern European immigrant Wolf, sparks fly. They return to Sean’s apartment and begin a high energy and hugely sexual affair. What starts as a mere chance meeting slowly evolves into something more. Wolf is easy going, turning tricks to supplement his living, while Sean is needy, talkative and neurotic. Creating a stable relationship is fraught with problems. With Wolf disappearing for hours at a time and Sean doing drugs the two of them seem to be headed down a path of destruction.
John (Tim Swain) agrees to be Italian horror actress and singer Solange's (Mahogany Reynolds) assistant, and he's thrilled to be swept into her glamorous, arty European world. But when the sex and drug lifestyle gives way to murder, John begins to question Solange's motives. Based on the novel by James Derek Dwyer and filmed on location in Europe, this offbeat comedy pays homage to the cinema of the 1980s and features a hip soundtrack.
BETWEEN SOMETHING & NOTHING is based on filmmaker Todd Verow’s experiences at Rhode Island School of Design. After being accepted into a prestigious New England art school, sexy small-town JOE and townie mastermind JENNIFER quickly join forces. They are determined to succeed on a campus over-populated with jaded mega-rich kids awash in trust funds, abortions and drugs galore.
What do construction workers do in their well-earned breaks? How might Angelina Jolie's and Brad Pitt's relationship have ended? And what really happened between Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford during the summer of 1959? The answers to these and many other interesting questions are provided by twelve queer New York filmmakers. Their films also scrutinize such topics as the difference between the way men and women dream, and how erotic tying a necktie or having a manicure can be.
Todd Verow, his latest film is an experimental narrative feature heralding the end time. Split up into 20 short films, the film explores the fear and longing of several characters as they wait for some unspecified apocalyptic event. Some try to escape physically, emotionally or sexually while others welcome the end with open arms. A woman (PHILLY) is busy dragging her own corpse, trying to find a resting place for it, when she encounters an old lover (MICHAEL BURKE) who used to be a she but has transitioned to a man. He wants to get out of town but she wants to stay it's the end of time when nothing is a crime. Several gay men engage in more and more extreme sexual activity, they want to experience it all before the big collapse. Two gay ex-lovers try to reconnect and feel something, anything but total emptiness. Porn actors and producers make more unsafe films as fantasies grow darker and more violent. Will the world end with a whimper or a bang? Or worse will it not end at all.
"Bulldog in the Whitehouse" takes political satire to obscene new heights: portraying the Bush administration as a cabal of lustful and traitorous gay men who are too busy having sex to notice the empire crumbling down around them. An explosive and darkly comic adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' novel Dangerous Liaisons, the film's web of sex and deceit centers on Bulldog, a hustler who seduces his way into the Washington press corps to gain access to the halls of the political elite. At the bidding of his puppet master, a corpulent and power mad Karl Rove, Bulldog engages in manipulative trysts with Whitehouse hotties like the demure press secretary, the religious leader and the confused, imbecilic good ol' boy president himself.
Filmmaker Todd Verow revisits his own youth for his latest work. The film's main character is Joe, who, like the director, grew up in Bangor in Maine. Joe, an 18 year old high school senior who longs to move away from poor white trash roots and this town, and dreams of attending art school, lives with his single mother and older sister Theresa on a notorious council estate called "Capehart Projects". Molested at the age of ten, Joe nevertheless decides to keep the incident to himself. He befriends an elderly disabled artist named Victor who hires him as houseboy/model. Joe moves in with Victor in his loft above the local opera house, hoping to escape Bangor with his help. He also works part time at a local market along with his sister, who wants to get out of town as much as he does. For most of high school, Joe has also had a crush on his best friend, Andrew, who plays on the high school football team.
Based on the journals of Nail, a male hustler who reentered the prostitution ring after 10 years in a relationship, Todd Verow's experimental documentary (shot entirely on a cell phone camera) examines the changing landscape of male prostitution. Nail's narrated journal entries accompany dreamy and abstract imagery shot all over the world. Verow also explores how the Internet has shaped the sex trade.
An ex-junkie, ex-stripper, demolition derby driving bartender who has finally settled down, tries to get her on the run girlfriend to stay with her. An East Coast woman who's marriage of 34 years has abruptly ended, goes to Hollywood to try to reconcile with her estranged daughter and her own abandoned dreams. Two guys celebrate their ten year anniversary by imagining ways they might have met and how they might eventually break up. A washed-up B-movie extra, who's star on the walk of fame has been somehow 'misplaced' years ago, befriends a punk rock girl whose boyfriend has just ditched her and his guitar.
Short composed entirely of men who post nude videos of themselves on the Internet.
A pseudo-documentary, made by Todd Verow and his gang, which describes the filmmaking methods of which Verow has become a bit of a guru in indie circles, capturing the rebel spirit of digi-features in the eyes of many mainstream media outlets. Verow’s production crew, which includes himself, producer/writer James Derek Dwyer, and a stable of actors including Philly, Brenda Velez, Eric Sapp, Devery Doleman, and Bill Dwyer, have cranked out an enormous amount of videotape, screening around the world to festivals, all the while maintaining an intimate and small-scale process.
Three generations of small town rebel-rebels crash into each other and burn in Todd Verow's new film, A Sudden Loss of Gravity. The small town of Bangor Maine is finally entering the 80's with a pile-up of new wave proportions. Based on true stories of the Northeastern town.
This film follows the life of a mentally ill street itinerant whose name is not worthy of mention. When not sleeping in the gutters of Manhattan's Lower East Side, our protagonist keeps busy juggling her schedule of drug abuse, trips to her shrink, and stealing from those misguided souls who, after taking pity on her, allow her temporary shelter in their homes.
A young married couple living year round on Cape Cod face the winter season uncertain of their future, apart or together.
Suzanne Fountain moves to NYC and plummets headlong into a twisted wonderland.
An urban comedy of identity lost and found via sexual indiscretions, Frances is initially a bored 9-to-5-er. She comes to the much-prolonged decision to leave her mentally unstable husband and begins to live out of her office, unbeknownst to her co-workers. Each night she goes to a different nightclub or a bar in Boston and forces herself out of her protected prim existence by meeting and picking up different men. Through exploring different persona's and what she is capable of, she hopes to find herself.
West Side Story meets Rumble in the Bronx meets A Clockwork Orange. Bizarre tale of London, a lonely teen yearning for affection and a leather jacket who lives in a dysfunctional family home where the mother keeps popping and sexually playing with her other child, X-Ray, a member of a gang of Mods who are constantly at war with a gang of Asian Bikers. Amidst this turmoil, London and her soul mate M16 search for meaning in a phantasmagoria without it.
Todd Verow’s long lost first feature shot on a PXL Fisher Price kid’s video camera (which recorded black and white, high contrast, pixalated video on audio cassette tapes) captures a group of San Francisco 20-something models, drag queens, musicians and artists in the early 1990’s. It was Verow’s reaction to working on the first season of MTV’s Real World that spurned him to create PREEN, something just a bit more real.
Terminal USA is the story of a Japanese-American family with more than their fair share of quirks. Ma (Sharon Omi) is stealing grandpa's morphine, Airhead sister (Jenny Woo) is having sex with the family lawyer, One brother (Jon Moritsugu) gets perfect grades but is hiding a secret gay love of skinheads, and the other brother (also Jon Moritsugu) is a wastoid druggie. The tension leads to an explosion of absurd violence as crazier and crazier things happen to the family.
A tall and torrid story BUILT FOR ENDURANCE is an experimental short film based on a true story about a violent gay hustler and his so-called girlfriend who attack a man who has been stalking them.
An experimental short film about phone sex workers.
Todd Verow’s THE DEATH OF DOTTIE LOVE (1990) is based on the true stories of 3 people who where murdered in Bangor, Maine in the 1980s.
A tale of two teens--Violet is an actress wandering through the years of her career with remarkable ease and media attention despite her lack of an attention span or talent. A young man also tries to make it in New York City, but his naivity leads him to a life of hustling. Violet and the hustler may be the same person.
While cruising for sex, a gay man has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to right some recent political wrongs and make America great again.
An experimental short film by Todd Verow about an unhappy marriage of convenience between a gay man and a lesbian who yearn for the pleasures of the flesh with other men and women.
Rick, a photographer, witnesses the brutal murder of a gay man in Central Park. With the cops taking little interest in the crime, a dangerous and sexy game of cat and mouse ensues between Rick and the killer, Adam.
