The BRIM Canon

What BRIM is made of

BRIM is four caps and one donation. It is also a set of records, books and films — the things that taught us what we are trying to say on a hat.

Everything on this list passed the same test our photographs have to pass: gay by context, never by costume. Real places, ordinary clothes, people who are not performing. One playlist, three shelves, three screening rooms.

33 tracks · 25 books · 23 films. What we deliberately left out is at the bottom, and it matters as much as what stayed.

Part one — the playlist

The ordinary morning

The cluttered kitchen, the cap on a hook, two men with nothing to prove.

  • Same Size Shoeserpentwithfeet · 2021Love told through a shared shoe size — domesticity as the whole event.
  • IvyFrank Ocean · 2016The memory of a summer, sung like it is still being figured out.
  • That is Us / Wild CombinationArthur Russell · 1986A cellist alone in a room in New York, inventing warmth.
  • AlanPerfume Genius · 2017You need me? An apartment, a routine, no announcement.
  • AnythingAdrianne Lenker · 2020Recorded on tape in a wooden cabin. You can hear the room.
  • Ever NewBeverly Glenn-Copeland · 1986A trans elder singing about being alive outdoors. Zero irony.
  • American TeenagerEthel Cain · 2022Parking lots, bleachers, flags — America at eye level.
  • EugeneArlo Parks · 2019Being in love with a friend, described rather than dramatised.
  • Time Will TellBlood Orange · 2018Patience as a mood.

Part one — the playlist

The basement

The night our people actually built — not the night used as a backdrop.

  • Mystery of LoveFingers Inc. · 1988Chicago house at source: Black, gay, made on nothing.
  • You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)Sylvester · 1978The one club record that earns its place — he was never in costume.
  • The Whistle SongFrankie Knuckles · 1991Instrumental joy. No lyric, all lift.
  • Not About YouHoney Dijon · 2017The living link between that basement and now.
  • BlindHercules & Love Affair · 2008ANOHNI singing disco like a funeral and a party at once.
  • Enough for LoveKelela · 2023Club music turned inward, for the walk home.
  • Gospel for a New CenturyYves Tumor · 2020The swagger quota. Loud, funny, entirely unbothered.
  • DeceptaconLe Tigre · 1999Queercore energy — dry, frontal, three minutes.

Part one — the playlist

What was won

The political side. Still sung, never lectured.

  • Smalltown BoyBronski Beat · 1984A kid leaving home with a bag. That is the Ali Forney Center’s entire mission, set to a synth line.
  • Sun Goes DownLil Nas X · 2021Teenage shame, said plainly by someone who won anyway.
  • Silk ChiffonMUNA · 2021Happiness with no apology and no glitter.
  • Dead of NightOrville Peck · 2019Queer country: the hat, the highway, the workwear.
  • QueenPerfume Genius · 2014No family is safe when I sashay — the swagger of being the threat.
  • It Must ChangeANOHNI and the Johnsons · 2023Grief and demand in the same breath.
  • True Blueboygenius · 2023Being known by your friends — the chosen-family song.
  • People’s FacesKae Tempest · 2019There is so much peace to be found in people’s faces.

Part one — the playlist

The European side

Because BRIM was not only made in Brooklyn.

  • Comme ils disentCharles Aznavour · 1972A man who lives with his mother and works nights. The absolute ancestor of gay by context — fifty years early, in French, on prime-time radio.
  • KidEddy de Pretto · 2018Masculinity handed down as an order, refused out loud.
  • iTChristine and the Queens · 2014Gender worn like a jacket, not a statement.
  • CorpsYseult · 2021The body as it is, with no negotiation.
  • GrandiosePomme · 2019Small, close, breathing — French intimacy without the strings.
  • Week-end à RomeÉtienne Daho · 1984French queer pop history, disguised as a holiday.
  • Le dernier jour du discoJuliette Armanet · 2021The joy quota.
  • Amour censureHoshi · 2018Written by someone who was attacked over a music video. It stays.
If you only keep three: Smalltown Boy, Same Size Shoe, Comme ils disent. The three ages of the brand — leaving, settling in, growing old and calm.
Listen on Spotify

Part two — the shelves · 01 photography

Nine books of photographs

This is where we learned what ordinary looks like. If you buy one, buy the first.

  • Gay SemioticsHal Fischer · 1977A photographic inventory of the signals worn on the body to be recognised without speaking. It is this brand’s whole idea, published fifty years before this brand.
  • Fragile / ConcordeWolfgang Tillmans · 1997–2018The snapshot held as serious work.
  • The Ballad of Sexual DependencyNan Goldin · 1986Honest light, real bedrooms, no styling.
  • The PiersAlvin Baltrop · 1975–86New York’s waterfront: bodies, labour, weather.
  • Christopher Street 1976Sunil Gupta · 1976People in the street in everyday clothes.
  • Portraits in Life and DeathPeter Hujar · 1976Sitters who perform nothing. Held emotion.
  • Eye to EyeJEB / Joan E. Biren · 1979Lesbian daily life: kitchens, gardens, porches.
  • Faces and PhasesZanele Muholi · 2006–The portrait as an act of archive rather than of style.
  • Rebel YouthKarlheinz Weinberger · 1958–65Working-class Swiss kids: denim, buckles, zero stylist.

Part two — the shelves · 02 stories

The novels

Where the voice on the caps comes from — someone talking, not a brand explaining.

  • Giovanni’s RoomJames Baldwin · 1956A rented room in Paris, and the cost of not saying it.
  • Stone Butch BluesLeslie Feinberg · 1993The factory, the union card, the night shift. The working-class counterweight this whole list needs.
  • To the Friend Who Did Not Save My LifeHervé Guibert · 1990The French AIDS years, written from inside the body.
  • The End of EddyÉdouard Louis · 2014Northern France, poverty, and getting out. Reads next to Smalltown Boy.
  • Young MungoDouglas Stuart · 2022Glasgow, a tenement, two boys, a fishing trip that goes wrong.
  • On Earth We’re Briefly GorgeousOcean Vuong · 2019A nail salon, a tobacco field, a letter to a mother who cannot read it.
  • Fun HomeAlison Bechdel · 2006Small-town Pennsylvania, drawn. The funeral home is the family business.
  • The ArgonautsMaggie Nelson · 2015Building a family in real time, with the theory left in.
  • Real LifeBrandon Taylor · 2020A lab, a Midwestern campus, exhaustion. Gay by context, entirely.
  • Just KidsPatti Smith · 2010Chosen family, broke, in New York.

Part two — the shelves · 03 groundwork

How this got won

Six books about who did the work, and who paid for it.

  • Let the Record ShowSarah Schulman · 2021ACT UP New York told as an operations manual: how a small group actually got results.
  • Act Up, une histoireDidier Lestrade · 2000The French chapter, by the person who started it.
  • Cruising UtopiaJosé Esteban Muñoz · 2009Queer joy argued as a political project — the theory behind GAYS AGAINST SADNESS.
  • An Apartment on UranusPaul B. Preciado · 2019Dispatches from a body in transition, in a Europe in transition.
  • Bad GaysHuw Lemmey & Ben Miller · 2022The vaccine against turning any of this into a catechism.
  • On PhotographySusan Sontag · 1977Because anyone who makes pictures of people should know what that does.

Part three — the screening rooms · 01 the everyday

Two men, a plain room

The core of it. No costume, no period, no explanation.

  • WeekendAndrew Haigh · 2011A flat in Nottingham, forty-eight hours, washed t-shirts. If BRIM were a film, this one.
  • God’s Own CountryFrancis Lee · 2017A Yorkshire farm: mud, lambing, overalls — and the caps.
  • Stranger by the LakeAlain Guiraudie · 2013One beach, one summer, shot like a documentary until it is not.
  • CloseLukas Dhont · 2022Two Belgian boys, a bike, a field. What friendship costs at thirteen.
  • Beautiful ThingHettie Macdonald · 1996A council estate, loud mothers, a radio.
  • Happy TogetherWong Kar-wai · 1997A shared kitchen in Buenos Aires. Love as a bad flatshare.
  • MoonlightBarry Jenkins · 2016Three ages of one man, and a diner scene that does everything.
  • PariahDee Rees · 2011Brooklyn, a teenager, a family that will not have it.
  • All of Us StrangersAndrew Haigh · 2023The parents you would want to come out to, and cannot.

Part three — the screening rooms · 02 the city and the fight

The room that explains the donation

Fifteen dollars a cap goes to the Ali Forney Center. These are the films that tell you why.

  • KikiSara Jordenö · 2016New York’s homeless queer youth, today, on camera. This is who the Ali Forney Center takes in. Watch this one first.
  • Paris Is BurningJennie Livingston · 1990The source text. Also a lesson in who gets paid.
  • 120 BPMRobin Campillo · 2017Meeting minutes as cinema — how a campaign is actually argued.
  • Tongues UntiedMarlon Riggs · 1989Poetry, rage and Black gay life.
  • My Own Private IdahoGus Van Sant · 1991Street kids on a highway. Beauty without cleaning it up.
  • Petite Fille · The Lives of ThérèseSébastien Lifshitz · 2016–20The documentary gaze we admire most.
  • DisclosureSam Feder · 2020A century of trans representation, unpicked by the people depicted.
  • How to Survive a PlagueDavid France · 2012Archive footage of activism that worked.

Part three — the screening rooms · 03 joy

No apology required

One of the caps says GAYS AGAINST SADNESS. Here is the evidence.

  • Fire IslandAndrew Ahn · 2022Jane Austen with a group chat and no money.
  • Show Me LoveLukas Moodysson · 1998Being bored in a small town, and leaving it.
  • But I’m a CheerleaderJamie Babbit · 1999Conversion therapy handled as comedy.
  • The Watermelon WomanCheryl Dunye · 1996A Black lesbian filmmaker inventing the archive she needed.
  • RafikiWanuri Kahiu · 2018Nairobi in pink and blue. Banned at home.
  • JoylandSaim Sadiq · 2022Lahore, a joint family household, a theatre backstage.
If you watch three: Kiki, for why the donation exists. Weekend, for the tone. God’s Own Country, for the wardrobe.

The cutting-room floor

What we left out on purpose

The club canon — Born This Way, YMCA, It’s Raining Men. The great films in period costume, Portrait of a Lady on Fire included: beautiful, and literally costume. And the whole cluster of glitter, neon, harness, mesh, wigs and posed bare chests.

They are good work. They just make us sound like someone else.

One gap worth naming: trans and lesbian voices are here but outnumbered, because the four caps currently speak from a gay man’s position. If a fifth slogan ever widens that, this list widens first.

See the caps   Where the money goes

Compiled August 2026. Filter: real places, ordinary clothes, held emotion. Colours sampled from our own photographs. Fifteen dollars from every cap goes to the Ali Forney Center.