CHANNEL 4 MARK 50 YEARS OF PRIDE IN THE UK

Channel 4 is marking 50 years of Pride in the UK with a special season of landmark programmes and specials.

This bumper season of high profile content will reflect on the incredible achievements and challenges of advancing LGBTQ+ rights and visibility over the last half century, while also platforming the diversity of identity and sexuality in the 2020s.

At the centre of the season will be a pair of new factual commissions. 50 Years of Pride (w/t) will be a landmark documentary on the history of the movement in the UK, made in collaboration with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Stephen Daldry and playwright Joe Robertson.

The film will be told through first-person testimony and archive footage, hearing from those who faced down intense hostility and discrimination at the start, as well as from a younger generation for whom Pride has always been part of their life and identity.

Focusing in on trans history, April Ashley (w/t) will be the first in-depth feature documentary on this trailblazer for trans woman in the UK. Ashley, who died last year at the age of 86, was one of the country’s most prominent transgender women – a model, dancer and restaurateur whose rollercoaster life took her from the slums to wartime Liverpool to a world of celebrity friendships, a landmark divorce trial, and an MBE for services to equality. Both films will go out around the anniversary of the first UK Gay Pride Rally which was held in London on 1st July 1972.

Across All 4 there will be a special collection of content that reflects on how Channel 4 has been at the forefront of pushing LGBTQ boundaries with ground-breaking programming. Film4 and Channel 4 will be showing a number of films exploring representation-from ground-breaking classics like My Beautiful Laundrette and Buddies to recent hits like Rocketman, Gods Own Country and Love, Simon.