Under the Southern Cross is an unflinching portrayal of Appalachian queer painter and poet Henry L. Faulkner from Egypt, Kentucky (1924–1981). The most documented queer man in the history of Kentucky — and possibly the country — Faulkner chronicled his life and lovers from adolescence in the 1930s until the day he died. This film tells a raucous, unapologetic, and unfiltered story through Faulkner’s photographs, paintings, poetry, rare film and audio recordings, and interviews with those who knew him. It describes a boy — and a man — unwilling to hide who he was and prepared to face the consequences of his authenticity.

Through his national reputation as a painter, Faulkner befriended many well-known LGBTQ+ artists, including Edward Melcarth, Tennessee Williams, James Herlihy, and actors Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, and Vincent Price, as well as Bertolt Brecht and Stefan Brecht.

Faulkner was unashamedly gay in a time when many LGBTQ+ people lived closeted lives. Self-proclaimed a “radical homosexual,” his art was a fusion of lived experience, an acute sense of color, and his sexuality. For him, there was no separation. Faulkner’s openness cost him dearly, including incarceration in insane asylums and frequent police raids of his home. Yet his houses in Lexington, Kentucky, and Key West, Florida, became refuges for many young people — both gay and straight — in search of a freer way of life.