James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The History of Queers and Cinema

This classic, "Out at the Movies: A History of Gay Cinema," by Steven Paul Davies covers the basic ground, focusing on, but not limited to films made in the United States. From the closet days of the fifties: (The Wizard of Oz) through the ominous classics of the sixties: (The Killing of Sister George, Midnight Cowboy, The Children's Hour) up through the early 21st century: (Angels in America, Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica), he chronicles a progression of the best-known films, actors and directors who brought LGBT life to light on the big screen.

"Queer Screen: A Screen Reader," edited by Jackie Stacey and Sarah Street is an anthology, a collection of different writers presenting a compilation of articles about specific queer films and the issues surrounding them. Most of the contributors to this anthology are women and so it provides a distinctly lesbian perspective to the world of queer cinema.

"Queer Cinema in Europe," edited by Robin Griffiths takes us across the pond with another anthology examining queer identity in film. This book contains fourteen scholarly essays. Identities, aesthetics, queer bars and queer spaces and coming out stories in the cinema of Europe are some of the topics broached in this collection of predominantly male writers.