Lesbian Film Research Articles

Dismantling the Geotemporality of Europeanization: The First European Festival of Lesbian and Gay Film was Yugoslav

This paper draws upon my fieldwork at the Festival of Gay and Lesbian Film in Ljubljana to examine how “Europeanness” is used to ground the legitimacy of minoritarian organizations, but also to question the assumptions implicit in such claims to belonging. I argue that the discourse of Europeanness is used in similarly ambivalent ways in both Slovenian lgbt activism and official Slovenian politics: for political and institutional legitimization that also performs a distancing from the post-Yugoslav region. This discursive distancing serves to hide the constant processes of negotiation of belonging within the eu as well as ongoing practical cooperation and communication within the post-Yugoslav region. Attention to such strategic tensions opens up a possibility of formulating a critique of the discourse that posits Europeanization as the only possible future for the region and Europe as an imagined space of tolerance for minorities.

A One‐Inch Mound of Flesh: Troubling Queer Identity in Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Enemies and adversariesThey try and tear me downYou want me, baby, I dare youTry and tear me down.-Tear Me Down, Hedwig Schmidt,Hedwig and the Angry InchGender is a complexity whose totality is permanently deferred.-Judith Butler, Gender TroubleIntroductionIn the late 1980s and early 1990s, independent film studios produced an array of films that candidly explored the lives and experiences of gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans gender, and individuals, inadvertently launching what B. Ruby Rich infamously labeled the New Queer Cinema.1 Among other things, these films helped foster visibility, making identity a more integral part of the mass media and lives a larger part of the national conversation. commercial success of these films led Hollywood to follow suit, and within a few short years the studios were also producing films with subject matter.2 By the mid-1990s, gay-themed storylines and references to homosexuality were also plentiful on network television.3 1995, Entertainment Weekly, then the foremost arbiter of popular cultural tastes, published a special issue on The '90s, claiming that entertainment had come out of the closet. the cover story, John Cagle discusses gay-friendly entertainment, which he sees everywhere in the 1990s, citing the success of films such as Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995) and the appearance of gay characters on television shows such as Roseanne, Friends, and Simpsons. Given this, Cagle quite optimistically says: In 1995, the gay stream flows freely into the (23).4In her introduction to a special Trans gender Issue of GLQ in 1998, Susan Stryker similarly notes the sweeping changes occurring in professional and popular attitudes toward trans gender phenomena, pointing out that representations of cross-dressed, transsexual, gender-ambiguous, or otherwise gender-queer figures are ubiquitous in venues such as drag-queen and -king shows, gay and lesbian film festivals, and she-male pornography, as well as in television sitcoms, major motion pictures, billboard advertising, and a variety of mass media print sources (146). Gay, lesbian, and representation within main- stream media became even more widespread (as well as more lucrative) at the end of the 1990s and the start of the 2000s, as evidenced by commercially and critically successful films such as Birdcage (1996), & Out (1997), Chasing Amy (1997), Gods and Monsters (1998), and Boys Don't Cry (1999); by popular television shows such as Ellen (1994-1998), Will & Grace (1998-2006), and Queer as Folk (2000-2005); and by the dramatic increase in advertising aimed at the niche market of gay and lesbian consumers.5 October of 2000, Entertainment Weekly published another special issue on gay culture, this one promising to take us Inside the TV Revolution and to let us hear Gay Filmmakers Sound Off. There was little here that was new or news, but there was a good deal of celebration over the high visibility and acceptance of gay characters, actors, writers, directors, and producers, which made it quite clear that the previous decade marked a significant increase in the representation of identities in the mainstream media.The media's treatment of identities calls for a serious critical inquiry among media scholars, one aligned with the academic discipline of queer media a merger of well-established film and television studies practices with a queer perspective. antecedents of theory can be traced to earlier work on social constructionism found in women's studies and gay and lesbian studies, and to poststructuralist literary and cultural theory, but two works in particular have been taken as foundational texts for theory: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet (1990) and Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990). …

The ethics of shared embodiment in queer, feminist and lesbian pornography

This article discusses contemporary queer, feminist and lesbian porn film culture in Europe. I argue that this film culture invites a particular kind of embodiment, enabled by new media technologies, but also anchored in queer and feminist political and aesthetic legacies. Taking the Swedish short film collection Dirty Diaries: Twelve Shorts of Feminist Porn (2009. Stockholm: Njutafilms), in which I myself participated as one of the filmmakers, as my main example and borrowing from film scholar Laura U. Marks, I propose that queer, feminist and lesbian porn calls forth an ‘ethics of shared embodiment’. This is an ethics capable of accommodating heterogeneity and disagreements that lie at the heart of the film culture. This ethics is not about leaving conflicts behind or reaching a fixed goal, such as a formula for what queer, feminist and lesbian porn is or should be. Borrowing from José Esteban Muñoz, I instead claim that this ethics is about reaching out for and casting pictures of a goal. It is about trying out various paths while simultaneously being able to harbour difficulties and failures along the way.

Carnal fantasizing: embodied spectatorship of queer, feminist and lesbian pornography

A reinvigorated transnational queer, feminist and lesbian porn film culture has emerged during the last decade. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article discusses spectatorship in this film culture in the contexts of Pornfilmfestival Berlin, the Club LASH in Stockholm and the production of the feminist porn film collection Dirty Diaries (Engberg, Sweden, 2009). Analyzing research subjects’ accounts of film experiences in terms of embodied spectatorship (Sobchack), habituation (Williams) and fantasy (de Lauretis), I propose an understanding of porn spectatorship as an embodied and psychic engagement shaped, but importantly also continuously reshaped, by personal histories and social contexts. I argue that viewer engagement in porn is not limited to identification with certain characters or roles and that desire and fantasy are not coherent or always consistent with political views or identities. Nevertheless, social identities and/or personal experiences and practices may have impacts on different subjects' engagements in porn scenarios.

Lesbians, tea, and the vernacular of fluids

In Go Fish, Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner's seminal lesbian film from 1994, one of the protagonists complains that the woman who her friends want to set her up with has cupboards of herbal tea and no sex appeal. In the course of the film, the women end up together, but the joke/not-joke about lesbians and their fondness for herbal tea remains. What can we make of this conjunction? What does the linkage of tea and lesbianism connote and how does tea function within representational economies of lesbianism? On the one hand, tea functions as prelude to eroticism and codes for the opacity of lesbian sex. On the other hand, it also works to consolidate stereotypes about lesbianism. In this essay, the author explores the factors that make this almost joke possible – the gendering of tea as feminine, stereotypes about lesbian feminism – and examine ways in which it has been deployed as a form of lesbian shorthand. In working to understand why tea has evoked this stereotype, a sense of American counter-cultures, Orientalism, and historical memory come together to paint second-wave lesbian feminism as out of touch, politically inactive, and intimidated by sex. But what alternatives might tea open towards? Focusing on tea, then, gives us access to economies of desire and pleasure that both build on perceptions of radical feminism and expands upon it by establishing a vernacular of fluids, taste, and tactility.

"Temporary Organizing, Communities & Continuity: Enacting the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival"

This study is concerned with how continuity is achieved within the context of recurrent temporary organization. Our qualitative research, which takes a practice approach, focuses on the ‘London Les...

Activism, affect, identification: trans documentary in France and Spain and its reception

This article explores the documentation of trans activism in France and Spain since the 2000s. The first part addresses questions surrounding the place of affect and narrative in documentary film, particularly in relation to trans issues. The second part of the article analyses an audience case study from a screening at the International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Barcelona of Valérie Mitteaux’s Girl or Boy, My Sex is Not My Gender (2011), considering how different viewers respond to the representation of trans identities. The article builds on qualitative research while extending the exploration of sexuality and gender in previous audience studies to a consideration of documentary film, seeking to provide a more nuanced understanding of what audience claims for identification in politicised contexts mean.

Bisexual Erasure in ‘Lesbian Vampire' Film Theory

Lesbian vampire theory operates within the matrix of feminism, queer theory, and horror studies. Bisexuality has a strained relationship with queer theory, and Christopher James provides a compelling account of how bisexuality has been appropriated by queer, lesbian, and gay theory. The strategy James terms “appropriation without representation” occurs when theorists do not include bisexuality as a sexual orientation in their analysis, yet they label characters that behave in bisexual ways as gay or lesbian. Bisexual characters have been written out of scholarship about ‘lesbian vampire' films through this appropriation. A bisexual epistemological perspective accounts for a broader understanding of the sexuality expressed in films that are traditionally included in the ‘lesbian vampire' subgenre, such as The Hunger (1983), Blood and Roses (1960), and Daughters of Darkness (1971). This article charts how bisexuality functions invisibly within these so-called lesbian vampire films and how scholarship surrounding the films contributes to bisexual erasure.

Contextualizing Chinese lesbian cinema: Global queerness and independent films

Abstract The objective of this study is to contextualize Chinese lesbian cinema that emerged in the twenty-first century in mainland China. By situating lesbian films in the context of globalization, particularly within the framework of the debate on global gayness, it traces the trajectory of a new Chinese discourse of homosexuality, developed since the 1990s and articulated through the dynamic interaction and assimilation between predatory Euro-American and resistant local forces. Being both a part and a product of the hybrid homosexual discourse, lesbian cinema subsists in the space of Chinese independent/underground film, bearing all the major characteristics of the marginalized subgenre. The article concludes with critical analysis of two films, Jinnian xiatian/Fish and Elephant (Li Yu) in 2001 and Lalala/Lost In You (Zhu Yiye) in 2006, to showcase how female same-sex love and relationships are defined and represented in Chinese lesbian cinema.

Seduced and abandoned: Lesbian vampires on screen 1968–74

Between 1968 and 1974 there was an extraordinary proliferation of lesbian vampire feature films. This proliferation was due to a combination of factors. Graphic representations of lesbian sex entered the low-budget horror genre due to the more general relaxing of restrictions on what was permissible on screen at that time. This took place against what is often termed the ‘sexual revolution’ and the rise of feminism. Critical work on these films has tended to follow the work of Bonnie Zimmerman and Andrea Weiss who suggested that the narrative of these films employ a structure of bisexual triangular desire wherein the heterosexual couple are threatened by the lesbian vampire only to be reunited at the end of the film – thus alleviating men's fears and re-establishing patriarchal norms. A close analysis of the films, however, indicates that although some do employ the structure of bisexual triangular desire, the critique established by Zimmerman and Weiss is extremely impoverished in relation to the complexity of the films themselves.

Lesbian Classics in Germany? A Film Historical Analysis of Mädchen in Uniform (1931 and 1958)

The films Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, 1931, Germany; Géza von Radványi, 1958, Germany) both tell the story of a schoolgirl falling in love with her teacher at a Prussian boarding school. Whereas the 1931 version is regarded as a lesbian classic in queer (German) cinema, the 1958 remake, however, is not even considered part of the lesbian genre. The following analysis examines both films within their historical context to answer the question what makes Mädchen in Uniform (1931) a lesbian film and why the remake did not measure up to its original's significance.

Towards a Transnational Lesbian Cinema

This article explores the relationship between lesbian independent cinema and transnational cinema in Europe. The first part of the article outlines two main directions—one thematic and the other aesthetic—in which independent lesbian films in Europe utilize aspects of transnational cinema. The next section considers how these films articulate lesbian desire in relation to new discourses of sexual citizenship and immigration in Europe. The third part of the article examines lesbian independent films that seek to underscore the violence of immigration controls in Fortress Europe. What is significant about this group of films is that they encourage us to rethink the issue of sexual citizenship from a transnational perspective.

Prodigal Daughters: Portraying Lesbians in Hispanic Caribbean Cinema

During the last twenty years, Hispanic Caribbean cinema has slowly developed roles to represent lesbians. In order to draw a conceptual map and to examine the un/successfulness of this new lesbian “public image,” I analyze both independent films that challenge the status quo by portraying openly lesbian characters and mainstream films that insist on denying autonomy to same-sex love. Whereas commercial markets may deem an openly lesbian role transgressive, queer female roles can be considered “appropriate.” Gender-queering functions as a symbolically transitional stage toward lesbian visibility and inclusion.

Introduction: Special Issue on Global Lesbian Cinema

This article offers a brief introduction to this special issue on Global Lesbian Cinema. This issue particularly highlights the importance of recognizing lesbian discourse as a separate, related piece of the discourse of queer transnational and global cinema. Subsequently, brief summaries of the eight articles of this collection are provided.

From the Transnational to the Sinophone: Lesbian Representations in Chinese-Language Films

This article theorizes global lesbian cinema in Chinese-language films through regionalism, diaspora studies, and Sinophone studies. Through an inter-regional analysis of Butterfly (Yan Yan Mak, 2004, Hong Kong) and diasporic and Sinophone readings of Saving Face (Alice Wu, 2005, USA), I argue that Mak's film illustrates a Hong Kong regional retranslation of a Taiwanese lesbian story, which complicates any claim to a stable “Chinese” identity. Finally, Wu's representation of lesbianism also troubles the politics of Chineseness by pointing to the ways diasporic reproduction of “community” works through the disciplining of other non-normative sexualities.

Passing Through: Queer Lesbian Film and Fremde Haut

Expanding the horizons of lesbian film, Fremde Haut is located within three broad frames: the cross-dressing genre, the New Queer Cinema (NQC) movement, and an Accented or diasporic film aesthetic. While strong connections exist between the cross-dressing film and NQC, less addressed are the links between the New Queer and the Accented yet these are of more radical, that is queerer, potential. Through Fremde Haut, this article illustrates how intimately tied to race and nation, gender and sexuality are, to reveal the accented as queer and the queer as accented. Ultimately, what is distinguished is the potency of a new “quare” cinema.

Dualistic Hearts: Social Class, Education, Different Cultures, and Lesbian Love in Desert Hearts

Donna Deitch's Desert Hearts, one of the highest-grossing lesbian films ever made, is a groundbreaking and poignant movie about self-discovery and self-acceptance. This article focuses on the societal obstacles—such as vastly different social classes, cultures, and educational backgrounds—that Vivian and Cay must overcome in order to begin their relationship. The article also shows the taboos faced by gays in the 1950s, such as the firing of college professors in that era. The latent lesbian desire of the homophobic Frances, which is rarely addressed in criticism of the film, is discussed in detail.

Ten Years of Queer Cinema in China

“Ten Years of Queer Cinema in China” is a photo memoir with twenty photographs and commentary that documents two important cultural events rarely mentioned in US discussions of Chinese underground cinema. They are the First Chinese Gay and Lesbian Film Festival held at Beijing University in November of 2001 and the February 2001 screening of Andrew Cheng's Shanghai Panic (2001). Both events mark the moment when queer cultural activists began organizing their own events and establishing their singular film culture. What is unique about this period in Chinese cultural history is that Chinese queer cinema played an important role in the broader movement for Chinese personal and artistic freedom. During 2001 and 2002, Chinese were attending the same underground film events. They heard about them on the Internet or by word of mouth. Some traveled a long distance to attend them. And this led to an emerging sense of community and sometimes a collective euphoria about embracing a new culture that openly challenges repressive social boundaries.

“Out by Sixteen”: Queer(ed) Girls in Ginger Snaps

“Out by Sixteen”: Queer(ed) Girls in Ginger Snaps Tanis MacDonald (bio) Gender, like the real, is not only the effect of representation but also of its excess, what remains outside discourse as a potential trauma which can rupture or destabilize, if not contained, any representation. —Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender Something’s wrong. I mean, more than just you being female. —Brigitte Fitzgerald to her sister Ginger, Ginger Snaps Gender Bites; Sexuality Snaps Released to the cinematic public in 2000, John Fawcett’s Canadian cult-horror film Ginger Snaps was marketed—with an adolescent female audience in mind—as a wry and wrenching female version of classic B-movie transformation narratives like I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). Fawcett’s film, scripted by Karen Walton, retains the convention of conflating puberty and monstrosity, but instead of examining the body-changing dynamics of adolescent masculinity, Ginger Snaps holds the satirical magnifying glass up to the biological changes attending the onset of menstruation and focuses on social constructions of heteronormative femininity, including a horrified, comedic look at what manufacturers of depilatory products would call “unsightly and unwanted hair.” The sardonic wit of the film reveals that the excesses of representation alter the “effect” of gender as a technology of female identity, in Teresa de Lauretis’s terms. Corporeal excesses and the accompanying ruptures of maturation pile up early in the film, when the eponymous Ginger Fitzgerald is attacked by a creature that has been attracted by the smell of the blood from her first menstrual period. [End Page 58] Initially, the film seems to cast the Fitzgerald sisters in the conventional horror-film postures of sexualized monster (sixteen-year-old Ginger) and heroic “Final Girl” (her fifteen-year-old sister Brigitte), to use Carol Clover’s now-ubiquitous designation from her classic study, Men, Women and Chain Saws. In some ways, Ginger’s transformation into a werewolf remains well within the heterosexual norms of horror tradition: she becomes a beautiful female monster whose animal appetites are both eroticized and vilified, and she dies in order to preserve the social and sexual mores of the community. Ginger Snaps also complicates these conventions, however, by emphasizing the problems that attend the depiction of a female monster and by troubling the usual antagonistic relationship between monster and heroine, complicated within the film by the Fitzgerald sisters’ devotion to one another. Walton’s script seems to suggest, at a number of points throughout the film, that the sisters’ relationship includes incestuous homoeroticism, an undercurrent first evidenced in their blood pact to be “out by sixteen or dead in this scene: together forever, united against life as we know it.” The sisters’ promise to stay “together forever” crystallizes the intense romantic intimacy of adolescent female relationships and also acts as a covert sign for an erotic connection that is an open secret among fans of the film. While Fawcett and Walton did not necessarily set out to make a teen lesbian film, Walton states quite clearly on her commentary track on the DVD of Ginger Snaps that Ginger “loses her discretion” as she transforms, and that Walton intended at least one scene between the sisters—in which Ginger implies that her transformation erases their sibling relationship—to be even more explicitly incestuous. Despite the number of covert—and overt—lesbian encodings in the film, a queer(ed) reading of Ginger Snaps has been noticeable by its absence from scholarly criticism about the film, an absence made obvious in part because fan writing about the film has considered a number of nuanced ideas about the role that desire plays in the sisters’ relationship. For example, Xavier Mendik notes that Ginger Snaps brings “lesbian iconography to the werewolf genre” (81), and Sady Doyle’s feminist popular culture blog Tiger Beatdown praises the intense, “transgressive” eroticized relationships that the film highlights. Doyle’s discussion is especially interesting for the ways that it extends discussion of the reception of the film to a reading of relationships between female adolescent horror-film fans. Doyle’s assessment of Ginger Snaps as a film “specifically for women who used to be awkward teenage horror fans, and have ingested a substantial amount of...

When Fish Falls in Love with Elephant or Vice Versa: Sexual Representation in Mainland China’s Lesbian Film

Taking the movie Fish and Elephant as a case, the thesis analyzes, through a close-reading of the case movie, the different-from-western-style sexual representations in Mainland China’s lesbian film, with focus on sexuality desires, relationships, identities, as well as the cinematic narrative skills employed in the film.