Bressan, Arthur

1982

When other gay filmmakers were starting to invent stories of middle-class monogamy, Bressan turned up with Abuse, a queer kind of love story between a filmmaker and a 14-year-old child abuse victim. On Abuse (he said): "In 1975, when I met the real Thomas Carroll, I had no idea of making a movie about him, child abuse, or our relationship. Only after we became friends, then lovers, and finally ex-lovers, did I see a powerful film in his story. My straight and gay friends criticized me for my sexual involvement with Thomas. Some felt I was exploiting him, others believed he was using me simply to get away from his abusive parents. I listened to my friends but—like Larry, the filmmaker in the movie—I did not follow their advice. Instead, Thomas and I wound up living in San Francisco. I made Abuse because I thought it was a unique, compelling story about people and things that don't usually get into American feature films."

Schroder, Elizabeth

1987

The Bisexual Kingdom, where girl meets girl, still likes boy, and all hell breaks loose.

Mikesch, Elfi

1981

Walker, Nancy

1980

Produced by Allan Carr after the unlikely success of Grease, Can't Stop the Music was designed to broaden the appeal of ‘70s gay icons, The Village People. It is probably one of the strangest films of the ‘80s. On the one hand, it was promoted as the family musical movie phenomenon of the decade, and accordingly The Village People were scrubbed clean of their gay image (and the American Dairy Association sponsored a nationwide tie-in). On the other hand, the movie is chock-full of faggy in-jokes and nancy-boy behavior. Despite the (barely credible) central heterosexual romance, it's impossible to see it as anything but a queer treat. Besides, any movie with cameos of June Havoc, Barbara Rush, and Paul Sand must know a thing or two about gay credibility.

Yazaki, Hitoshi

1980

Yazaki, Hitoshi

1980

This beautifully bleak account of a Tokyo day-care worker's obsession with her roommate captures the bittersweet pain of unrequited love. Natsuko's coworker Etsuko asks her how she feels about men. "Not for me," she says, "I won't degrade myself." Based on an actual newspaper story, Afternoon Breezes presents Natsuko's repressed lesbianism (she vomits every time she feels attracted to a woman) as a crush which evolves into obsession. Natsuko's roommate Mitsu has a boyfriend, Hideo, who occasionally stays overnight with her. Natsuko breaks up their relationship by sleeping with Hideo (and she becomes pregnant). Mitsu discovers what Natsuko has done and kicks her out. Utterly desolate, Natsuko descends into a deep depression. She follows Mitsu through the streets, subways, and bars of Tokyo, stands outside Mitsu's apartment watching her window, takes Mitsu's garbage home with her and rolls around in it on the floor. In an ambiguous ending, while Mitsu is away Natsuko goes to her apartment. The film is relentlessly melancholic, with lots of ponderous long-takes of Natsuko hanging around, pining over Mitsu, obssessing, and being depressed. These real-time sequences are complemented with a remarkably complex use of sound (editing from quiet to rain to crickets, ringing bells, squeaky doors, dripping faucet, screaming kids). Conveying meaning through a wonderfully simple use of action and objects, the film has surprisingly little dialogue. Afternoon Breezes offers the cinema's most incredible and moving account of lesbian obsession since The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.

Waggoner, David

1978

It's time to talk.

Peck, Ron

1978

Jim, a gay teacher in a London comprehensive school, lives the classic double life: straight days in school, gay nights in bars and discos. With each new pick-up the same tension and uncertainty arises: Is there anything more to gay life than the one-night stand? At school he find himself overworked and forced to hide his true experiences and feelings. After the traditional year-end school dance and a drunken staff party, Jim finally pours out something of himself to a friendly female teacher. It is a step toward openness and enables Jim to face the inevitable explosion triggered by his curious 14-year-old students. Writers/directors Ron Peck and Paul Hallam began work on Nighthawks in 1975, creating the first feature film to come out of a gay community. Conceived as a "panoramic view of gay life in London," they soon realized it couldn't cover everything, and that what was needed was "hundreds of gay films, not half a dozen, to make homosexuality visible in the cinema."

Mariposa Film Group

1977

Ask a gay man or lesbian over 35 what film most affected their lives as gay people, and likely as not they'll answer Word Is Out. In the mid-1970’s the Mariposa Film Group, under the leadership of Peter Adair, undertook to make the first portrait of gay life made by and for gays and lesbians. Adair assembled a team of artists whose members went on to become some of the great names of independent filmmaking, and the result was a powerful success. Word Is Out, which premiered at the Castro Theatre in 1977, interweaves the stories of 27 gay men and lesbians (including local icons Pat Bond, George Mendenhall, Tede Matthews and Rick Stokes) in a complex tapestry that comprises possibly the most comprehensive single artistic testimony to what it means to be gay. Compelling, funny, poignant, inspiring — even twenty years after its release, Word Is Out retains its power to move hearts and change minds. To see it is to understand at the same time how far we have come and how far we have to go.

Reid, Frances

1977

The family lives of eight lesbian mothers and their children are profiled in this unique documentary, which was produced in 1977 by the ground-breaking feminist film distribution company Iris Films. After ten months of research and interviews with more than sixty lesbian mothers and their children, these eight families were chosen as the subjects of this controversial look at child custody by lesbian parents. These families represent a variety of racial and class backgrounds and a diversity of experiences. Their stories are augmented by an attorney and a clinical social worker, who offer their professional opinions on the legality, morality, and ultimately the human factors involved in cases of child custody by non-traditional parents. The interviews with the children are particularly moving: they are full of candor and wisdom about their personal experiences with courtrooms and custody, about having mothers who are “different,” and about their own emerging sexual identities.