That's where this issue comes in. City Paper's intrepid critics have zipped, pored and occasionally slogged through more than two dozen festival offerings to give you the straight-up lowdown. Like the Philadelphia Film Festival in March, the 2006 PIGLFF is a voyage of discovery, which is our way of saying we'd never heard of most of this stuff either. But if you aren't tossing around references to Gypo and Two Drifters by the time the festival's over, you're missing out.

Top honors this year go to Sandra Bernhard and Charles Busch, both receiving the fest's Artistic Achievement Award, with Darryl Stephens crowned a "Rising Star" before opening night's Another Gay Movie. Jenny Shimizu will pick up the inaugural "Lesbian Icon Award," although a Foxfire screening is not in the cards, and Chloë Sevigny, who plays a nun in 3 Needles, will stop by because, well, she's Chloë Sevigny.

This year's fest specializes in shattering stereotypes, from the implied romance between a cross-dressing boy and a Filipino cop in The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros to the transgender rappers of the homo-hop documentary Pick Up the Mic (screening next week). The three movies below do just that, focusing on the lives of men and women who are both LGBT and faithful Christians. Their stories show that the ongoing debates on homosexuality and the church are changing both communities, and creating identities that have yet to be fully understood.