Rediscovering Guy Gilles, pioneer of queer

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article positions Guy Gilles (1938–1996), an overlooked filmmaker at the periphery of the French New Wave, as an important pioneer of queer cinema. Situating Gilles in the context of the French gay liberation movement and the militant gay cinema of the 1970s, it brings the director in dialogue with the French philosopher, writer and activist Guy Hocquenghem, whose advocacy of a polyvocal sexual desire resonates with Gilles’s interrogation of traditional sexual taxonomies. Gilles’s fluid vision of sexuality is analysed in two seminal films, Absences répétées/Repeated Absences (1972) and Le Crime d’amour/For Love (1981), which crystallise the director’s exploration of non-normative desires and queer aesthetic. Reclaiming Gilles’s place in the wider genealogy of French queer cinema, the article seeks to contribute to the long-overdue rediscovery of this highly original director, who remains largely unknown in Film and Visual Studies.