While its most obviously queer storyline involves Montgomery MacNeil, a sensitive drama student who anxiously mentions being gay in a philosophical monologue to his classmates, the movie is rife with other queer-coded characters. The 1980 musical directed by Alan Parker tells the stories of a fictional group of students at New York City’s High School of the Performing Arts with realism and empathy, setting the bar for all performing arts high school movies to come. Without Fame, there would be no High School Musical or Step Up.

In depicting those invigorating moments on film (and creating their own), these movies showcase the diverse ways music finds its way into our lives: From Marlon Riggs’ electrifying video art merging dance music and poetry to Derek Jarman’s crushing combo of abstract sound and image, there is no limit to the ways queer film intertwines music and visuals into one enlivened work of art. While the very first queer films stretch back more than 100 years, it wasn’t until the advent of popular music in the mid-20th century that they became more explicitly about music. Queer cinema, an elastic catch-all for movies that focus on any mode of non-heterosexual desire, has often identified this truth with cunning inventiveness. As queer people, some of the most pivotal moments of our lives occur in spaces where music fills every corner: Moving as one in a heated club with your chosen family, singing along with your local drag queen, pressed against a throng of bodies at a life-giving concert-when it comes to expressing ourselves, music’s rapturous delights have always offered a clear path toward escape and ecstasy.

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