For dwellers of many big cities, the month of June is synonymous with gay pride. But thanks to the Sundance Channel, Cinemax and other cable/TV stations, it can be pride month for everyone, everywhere! And you don’t even have to leave home or whip out the rainbow paraphernalia.

June 1 kicks off the Sundance Channel’s annual month-long celebration of gay cinema, “Out Loud.” Amongst this year’s copious litter are U.S. TV premieres like: Trembling Before G-d, Lan Yu, Princesa, Herr Schmidt and Herr Friedrich, É Minha Cara (That’s My Face), The Devil in the Holy Water, American Fabulous, and Fire.

An attendance record-breaker during its theatrical release — New York’s Film Forum and Quad Cinemas ran it for almost five months combined! — Trembling Before G-d has “moved through the world with meaning,” as director Sandi Simcha DuBowski always hoped. An unprecedented, moving documentary on gay and lesbian Orthodox and Hasidic Jews — whose strict religion forbids homosexuality — Trembling Before G-d has screened all over the world, from college auditoriums to churches to synagogues and movie theaters. During that time, DuBowski also became something of a Michael Moore for gay Jews — queers from all homosexuality-prohibitive religions reach out to him with frequency.

DuBowski sees many benefits to the Sundance Channel’s upcoming cablecast — both for potential audiences and himself. “It means I don’t have to physically move people to come out of their houses to a screening,” he says. “Sometimes it takes a forklift to get homebound people to go anywhere. And it’s kind of a thrill to be able to say when someone asks, ‘Where’s your film playing?’ Just check your TV Guide.”

Also interested in how religion, family and sexuality — not to mention race — can tie together, Bronx-born filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris took a Super-8 camera and tape recorder along on a massive personal/geographical journey while making the feverish and stunning É Minha Cara (That’s My Face).

According to Harris, his experimental, poetic documentary — which played Sundance, Toronto, and numerous gay festivals — was first sparked by a trip to Salvador Da Bahia, Brazil, in 1995. After this visit, “something there was calling me,” he recalls. “I vowed that I would return to make a film there. With grants from the University of California, San Diego, where I was on the faculty in the visual arts department, I was able to [take] a three week tour around the country.”

Through newfound Brazilian friends, Harris was introduced to a network of U.S. expatriates and, via a principal on the film, Jorge, “a vibrant community of black intellectuals, gay Afro-Brazilians, as well as his extended family in the village of Praia Grande, on the island of Ilha de Maré.”

Four months later, Harris returned to the United States with over seven hours worth of Super 8mm footage and began negotiating what form the work should take. “The answer was a long poem that went back and forth between notes from my journey and memories of my childhood,” he says. “It then dawned on me that this film was a journey of self-discovery and that I was the central character.” From there, Harris unearthed troves of family photos and film in his grandparents’ basement amongst other family sources. Eventually, following a return to Brazil for pick-up shooting, he and co-producer Yvonne Welbon got to work on script structure and the film’s extensive, layered sound design.

“Most of all,” says Harris “in undertaking this journey I found that the path to self-discovery is often the path that leads to discovering the inner lives of others and that true self-knowledge is sometimes derived by focusing less on oneself than on the world around it.”

Other Out Loud highlights include L.I.E., an edgy tale of a pedophile and a father figure-hungry Long Island teen; a documentary on San Francisco’s legendary performance troupe/commune The Cockettes; porn world love story The Fluffer (see Michael Cunio interview on the previous page); Francois Ozon’s perverse story of violent teens who meet a horny old captor, Criminal Lovers; The Brandon Teena Story; Stanley Kwan’s tortured mainland China love story, Lan Yu; Yuan Zhang’s gripping interrogation drama, East Palace, West Palace; Thom Fitzgerald’s eloquent The Hanging Garden; Antonia Bird’s queer man-of-cloth feature, Priest; and an Argentinean story of gay thieves on the run, Burnt Money. You can access a full lineup at www.sundancechannel.com.

Also in June, Cinemax debuts a quartet of excellent gay works, several of which wish a Happy Father’s Day to boot. Georg and Abby Hartmann’s documentary, He’s Having a Baby, focuses on the efforts of a Hollywood couple, Jeff Danis and Don Pike, to become daddies (and not in the sexual role-playing way!). All About My Father concerns a daddy who’s also a mommy. Documentary filmmaker Even Benestad comes to understand his father Esben, who also identifies as a woman, Esther, in this sometimes funny, sometimes heart-tugging, always engrossing work. And be sure to catch Cinemax’s most delightful June premiere, Ruthie and Connie.

Although Ruthie Berman and Connie Kurtz could be any old, Jewish grandmothers you see on a park bench, they’re not. They’re loving lesbians and activists, officially together 25 years, and their inspiring — and highly entertaining — history is revealed in two-time Oscar nominee Deborah Dickson’s must-see documentary.

Don’t forget that this Friday, June 6, Bourbon Street will be celebrating the Sundance Channel’s “Out Loud Gay and Lesbian Film Festival” at 8:00 p.m. There will be giveaways all night long, including $500 in Nancy Boy products, 200 Out Loud CDs and 150 Kenneth Cole discount cards.