New Queer Cinema

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New Queer Cinema refers to the seemingly simultaneous appearance on the independent film circuit of movies dealing openly and even aggressively with queer culture, politics, and identity that began in the early 1990s.

In 1992, Sight & Sound magazine printed an article by North American Feminist and critic, B. Ruby Rich. The article, which gathered together Rich’s experiences of, and reflections upon, the strong gay presence on the previous year’s film festival circuit, effectively coined the phrase "New Queer Cinema." [1].

These movies were heavily influenced by the AIDS crisis, the indifference of the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush presidential administrations and the resulting homophobia and fear that ensued.

As B. Ruby Rich also wrote in the Village Voice,[1] she described films that were radical in form and aggressive in their espousal of sexual identities which challenged both the heteronormative status quo and the promotion of positive images of lesbians and gay men that had been advocated by the gay liberation movement for more than ten years: films such as Todd Haynes's Poison (1990), Isaac Julien's Young Soul Rebels (1991), Derek Jarman's Edward II and Tom Kalin's Swoon (1992).

These directors were making their films at a time when the gay community was still reeling at the heterosexual hysteria and policies of witch-hunting which had characterized the early days of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Jarman himself had been diagnosed with AIDS in 1986.

Simultaneously, queer theory and politics had begun to take hold in academic circles. Queer contends that "gay," and the concepts of "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality," are pre-constructed identities. Queer theory asserts that as these are the products of a specific era of social history, they are arbitrary and that there will come a time when they are no longer relevant categorizations. Queer is the freedom to make a choice. Whether a lesbian wants to sleep with a man, or a "straight" person wants to experiment, queer is about forging an identity of one's own.

When Rich noted that many films were beginning to represent sexualities which were unashamedly neither fixed nor conventional, the phrase "New Queer Cinema" was coined.

Contents

[edit] New Queer Cinema figures

[edit] Directors

[edit] Producers

  • Christine Vachon: Poison and Swoon
  • Andrea Sperling: The Hours and Times and The Doom Generation

[edit] Evolution of Queer Cinema

New Queer Cinema is not really an organized movement, despite the fact that the directors and producers associated with the term may share similar intentions. However, the attitude and openness of New Queer Cinema may be felt today in the production of more and more films such as Boys Don't Cry and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

In the 21st Century, Queer Cinema is no longer a small sub-genre of independent film; it is rather a traceable movement of cinematic representations of sex towards the destabilisation of conventional sexualities and identities. Contemporary queer is less about the radical form of those early examples of “New Queer Cinema”, than about the queering of traditional/classic cinematic content.

The list below highlights the trajectory of what was once considered a radical concept into the mainstream, taking less prescriptive and more fluid representations of sexuality with it.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b History of New Queer Cinema, webpage: Outrate-NQC

[edit] Further Reference

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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