Billy Quirk plays one of cinema’s earliest queer protagonists in the 1912 silent film ALGIE THE MINER. The film was directed (in part), and also produced, by French filmmaker Alice Guy Blaché who was one of cinema’s first female directors.

Buster Keaton meets female impersonator Julien Eltinge in the 1925 silent film SEVEN CHANCES.

Cecil B. DeMille’s 1922 silent drama MANSLAUGHTER briefly features what is credited to be the first erotically charged lesbian kiss in an American feature film.

Hamlet (Asta Nielsen) is a woman pretending to be a man in the 1921 German silent classic HAMLET, which results in some very queer situations.

Prince Belshazzar (Alfred Paget) and his guard (Elmo Lincoln) share in one of Hollywood’s earliest onscreen same-sex kisses in D.W. Griffith’s 1916 silent epic INTOLERANCE: LOVE’S STRUGGLE THROUGH THE AGES

Glenn Tryon swoons over Stan Laurel, and blows him a kiss, in the 1923 silent comedy THE SOILERS.