LGBTQ+ cinema has come a long way since the days when straight or closeted actors would regularly get asked in interviews how it felt to kiss a man: these days, LGBTQ+ performers from Ben Whishaw to Ian McKellen, via Elliot Page, Kristen Stewart or Colman Domingo, are almost routine presences in film – and with nothing to hide from their audiences. Hell, even Jodie Foster acknowledges her sexuality these days, after decades of it being the worst-kept secret in Hollywood.
That was far from the case in classic Hollywood – and even now the studios are resistant to change. But queer people have always contributed significantly to cinema, from directors (Eisenstein, Murnau, Cukor, Visconti, or the pioneering Dorothy Arzner) to performers (Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando). Queer cinema doesn’t only encompass films with openly LGTBQ+ subject matter, made by openly queer people – and thank god. Our presence is also there, throughout, in innuendo, subversion, costuming, set decoration, and vision. Brando wearing a skin-tight T-shirt in A Streetcar Named Desire: that’s LGBTQ+ cinema. Judy Garland singing The Man That Got Away in A Star Is Born: that’s LGBTQ+ cinema.
And yet, on the fringes of the mainstream, openly queer film-makers did eventually break through and start filming alternative sexualities and identities upfront, for the benefit of a newly open queer culture. Pioneers such as Kenneth Anger, Chantal Akerman, John Waters, Rainier Werner Fassbinder and Derek Jarman paved the way for new generations of avowedly queer film-makers.
