In the last week of Pride month, a look at what defines gay cinema

Read the full article on Firstpost, here: https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/from-my-own-private-idaho-to-four-days-in-france-a-look-at-the-factors-that-define-lgbtqi-cinema-4590621.html

On June 29, 1969, the New York Daily News, like many other newspapers, wrote about a “predawn police raid on a reputed Greenwich Village homosexual hangout, the second raid within a week, [which] touched off a two-hour melee yesterday as customers and villagers swarmed over the plainclothes cops.” This came to be known as the Stonewall riots, after the name of the “homosexual hangout,” and the event was, as Time called it, “the spark that ignited the modern gay rights movement in the United States.” Subsequently, June has come to be celebrated as Pride Month, and two films, both named Stonewall, are based on this event. The first, released in 1995, was directed by the British filmmaker, Nigel Finch. The second, released in 2015, was by Roland Emmerich.

There are, of course, many filmmakers who are homosexual, but it’s interesting to explore whether this “gayness” manifests itself in the films they make, and what really makes for a “gay film.” Is there a particular gay sensibility that’s manifest, even if the material is hetero-normative? Is it that the film has a gay protagonist, or is about LGBTQI issues? Finch and Emmerich, themselves, are two very different kinds of “gay filmmakers.” The latter is known for “macho” blockbusters like Independence Day and Godzilla, while Finch’s most recognised film may be The Lost Language of Cranes, a TV-movie version of (gay author) David Leavitt’s sensitive novel about a gay man and his family dynamics. (Sample line: “The longing to touch and be touched by another man [was] beginning again its plaintive wail inside of him…”)

Continued at the link above.

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Posted in: Cinema: English, Cinema: Foreign, Firstpost Column