Out of the past: feature about the ‘backward turn’ in LGBT filmmaking from the Guardian, July 4, 2014
I wrote a piece for the Guardian last week setting out a few of the ideas about recent LGBT cinema that I’ve been thinking about since BFI Flare earlier in the year – namely the idea of a ‘backward turn’ in which three types of film are increasingly prevalent: features with period settings; documentaries about figures from LGBT history; and stories about older characters and/or grieving. Upcoming examples of those soon to hit UK cinemas include I Am Divine, Pride and Lilting respectively.
A fourth facet of the turn would be the ongoing attention to reviving works from the archives, such as Taxi Zum Klo and Pink Narcissus, but I didn’t have space to go into that. In fact, I felt like I only had space to scratch the surface of the argument, which I suppose might be a sign that it has some merit. (There’s more about one of the titles mentioned, Nathan Evans’s Grey Liberation Front, here.)
A few people have made some useful suggestions for further viewing in the comments thread under the article. You can read the whole article here.
