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In 1992, B. Ruby Rich wrote an essay about a burgeoning movement in independent film, which she dubbed “New Queer Cinema.” It’s up for debate whether it was, in fact, new: although queer theory was still in its infancy at the time, movies by and for queer people had been made for decades. Many of the exciting new voices of the movement took heavy inspiration from their predecessors. But for the first time, queer cinema was on the verge of mainstream acceptance. There was plenty of controversy and hate-mongering from the usual suspects, but independent film was about to blow up in a big way, and some of the movement’s luminaries would blow up alongside it.
This was hardly a utopian movement: Rich points out that films made by lesbians, as well as films made by people of color, received short shrift compared to the success that filmmakers like Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant achieved. Still, in the wake of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the AIDS crisis, it must have been incredibly heartening to see such bold, exciting works of queer cinema accepted by the (indie) mainstream – and many of those works still hold up today. Take a look at thirteen films, from the scene’s predecessors to its heyday in the early 90s, that chart the history of New Queer Cinema.
It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives (1971)
Many films have been called “revolutionary,” but It Is Not the Homosexual… truly earns that description. The breakout film by director and activist Rosa von Praunheim (aka Holger Mischwitzky) became a foundational text of the German gay rights movement, and its call for liberation reverberated through the history of queer cinema. Homosexual follows Daniel, a young gay man who tries to assimilate into the traditional way of life before realizing that it’s ultimately futile and finding his place in the gay liberation movement. If it sounds didactic, well, it is – but von Praunheim isn’t a complete scold. He empathizes with Daniel as he attempts to fill the void in his life by fleeing into “a romantic world of kitsch and ideals” before discovering that another way is possible.
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)
If this article didn’t limit itself to one film per director, no less than five movies by Rainer Werner Fassbinder could have made it. But while Fox and His Friends and Querelle are both excellent, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is Fassbinder’s best, and arguably his most influential. One of his first films inspired by the melodramas of Douglas Sirk (who Todd Haynes would later pay homage to in Far from Heaven), Petra von Kant is striking, stylish, and campy: it’s the kind of movie where the protagonist decorates her apartment with a wall-sized Baroque painting and expresses her mood with a series of wigs. But just like Sirk, Fassbinder uses high drama – vicious lesbians, ugly sobbing, a single glamorous tear rolling down a woman’s cheek – to explore deeper truths. It’s a film about loneliness, the cycle of exploitation, and the ways people are willing to make themselves wretched for someone else’s amusement – or for their own self-pity.
Pink Flamingos (1972)
The Criterion release of Pink Flamingos comes with ingenious packaging, made to resemble a brown paper bag with the film’s logo printed on it like an old porn magazine. Of course, Pink Flamingos can’t really be called porn – very few people would be titillated by even a single frame of this movie, let alone its entirety – but it perfectly captures the spirit of John Waters’ “exercise in poor taste,” as well as what makes it a landmark of queer cinema. Pink Flamingos concerns itself with everything that disgusts polite society, whether it’s benign (trailer park living, tacky kitsch) or dangerous (violence and depravity). Waters, with his impish humor and eye for the rottenness of heterosexual norms, interrogates that disgust, questioning why, for instance, a perverted human trafficker would be freaked out by a harmless trans woman. Despite the notorious content, queerness isn’t presented as inherently filthy: the feces eating and prolapsed anuses are just Waters’ way of beating America at its own game.
Je Tu Il Elle (1974)
A year before Chantal Akerman made the slow cinema landmark Jeanne Dielman, she made Je Tu Il Elle, a black-and-white film that’s notable for containing the first explicit lesbian sex scene in cinematic history. (It’s considerably more tasteful and intimate than a similar scene in Blue is the Warmest Color, perhaps because it was directed by a lesbian.) Akerman’s love of precise composition and long takes is as evident here as it is in Jeanne Dielman, but while that film is often interpreted as a feminist statement, Je Tu Il Elle’s portrait of an unassuming young woman feels radical in its quiet queerness. Life as a queer person is not necessarily full of great joy or great torment. A lot of the time, queer life is spent alone in one’s apartment, making sandwiches and rearranging furniture.
Tongues Untied (1989)
The backlash against Tongues Untied, a lovely, eloquent documentary about director Marlon T. Riggs’ experiences as a gay Black man, was as depressing as it was predictable. Funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and eventually broadcast on PBS, Tongues Untied became a conservative target in their war against art funding, decried as “pornography” by hateful ghouls like Pat Buchanan and Jesse Helms. Of course, Tongues Untied isn’t porn: it’s frank about sexuality, but then again it’s frank about everything. Riggs laments the twin forces of racism and homophobia, using clips of bigoted pastors and snippets of Eddie Murphy’s stand-up to make his case. Riggs details the joys he finds in his life, as well as his fear of AIDS, a disease which claimed many of his friends and would eventually claim himself. It all swirls together in a creative nonfiction mélange, and it’s one of the most powerfully empathetic documentaries you’re likely to see. Anyone with a soul would be touched by it; no wonder Jesse Helms hated it.
Paris Is Burning (1990)
Whether you think RuPaul’s Drag Race honors or bastardizes ballroom’s legacy, whether you bless or curse Madonna for making “Vogue,” whether you think Jennie Livingston had any right to make this movie in the first place: Paris Is Burning is one of the greatest documentaries of all time, and it sits securely in the pantheon of queer cinema. It’s a snapshot of New York City’s ballroom culture, and it’s a fascinating look at the intricacies of a subculture that is still misunderstood today. But just as importantly, Paris is Burning introduces the audience to a cast of bright, charismatic, resilient queer people of color – Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Willi Ninja, and many more – as they display their artistry and carve out their own place in a world that has all but forsaken them. The fact that almost everyone featured in the film has died, of AIDS or otherwise, casts a tragic shadow over this joyous movie – but in a very real way, they have all become immortal.
My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Perhaps the most singular filmmaker of the New Queer Cinema movement, and unquestionably the most successful, Gus Van Sant has had a career like no other. He’s gone from art-damaged avant-garde cinema to big-hearted populist fare and back again, with films like Good Will Hunting coexisting alongside Elephant. My Own Private Idaho, which earned the late River Phoenix a Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival, splits the difference between those two modes. A re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, this film about a narcoleptic gigolo (Phoenix) and his love for a rich young fuck-up (Keanu Reeves) is honest and unsentimental about the realities of sex work, especially when the sex worker is a gay man who quite literally doesn’t know where he’ll wake up the next morning. But its evocative, yearning atmosphere, bolstered by lovely cinematography and a drifting pedal steel soundtrack, makes My Own Private Idaho a movie that can not only be admired, but cherished.
Poison (1991)
Poison may not be Todd Haynes’ best film – that would be Safe – but it’s one of the defining works of the New Queer Cinema movement. A triptych of surreal horror, this film truly has everything: flowers, B-movie aesthetics, designer prisons, body horror, AIDS metaphors, a little boy shooting his abusive father, and Jean Genet. It made only minor waves at the time: conservatives were appalled that it was partially funded by the NEA, and even its admirers were as perplexed as they were appreciative. But its victory at Sundance heralded the arrival of a major talent, who would eventually refine his iconoclastic, Barbie-whittling creativity but never lose his edge.
The Living End (1992)
In which New Queer Cinema gets its own Thelma and Louise. The long and winding career of Gregg Araki has taken him from gut-wrenching dramas like Mysterious Skin to stoner comedies like Smiley Face, but he made his name in the early 90s with low-budget, nihilistic films like The Living End, which features a pair of HIV-positive gay men going on a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime spree. Araki later called it his “most desperate movie,” and it shows: beneath its devil-may-care exterior, the film has a raw and despairing heart. But in its subversion of maudlin, melodramatic conventions in queer cinema (such as its deliberately anticlimactic climax), The Living End showed a path forward.
Orlando (1992)
“Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old.” These are the instructions given by Queen Elizabeth II (famous queer raconteur Quentin Crisp) to Orlando, a nobleman (and eventual noblewoman) played by Tilda Swinton. An adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s most playful novel, Orlando is a great deal of fun: Sally Potter breaks the fourth wall, luxuriates in period splendor, and takes puckish glee in toying with gender. It’s not at all frivolous – it’s thoughtful about gender norms, and understands that immortality isn’t always a blessing – but at the end of the film Orlando has a daughter, a motorcycle, and the knowledge that she’s the future of the human race.
Blue (1993)
Derek Jarman made films until he couldn’t. The British director of righteous state-of-the-nation screeds like Jubilee and The Last of England was succumbing to AIDS, which, among other things, began to take his eyesight: towards the end of his life, he could only see in shades of blue. Blue, his final film, doesn’t need that context to be devastating – it’s overwhelming just to listen to the swirling soundscape of ambient music and monologues courtesy of Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry, and Jarman himself. But as the viewer stares at that single shade of unchanging blue on the screen, the oceanic depths of Jarman’s sorrow, fear, and hope might just swallow them whole. “I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave.”
The Watermelon Woman (1996)
New Queer Cinema may have been a boon, but it was not perfect. Even as the movement gained steam, lesbian filmmakers, as well as Black filmmakers, were confined to the margins. In fact, The Watermelon Woman, directed by Cheryl Dunye, was the first feature film ever directed by a black lesbian. But while it deals with issues like pernicious stereotypes, the complicated legacy of Old Hollywood, and racial fetishization, The Watermelon Woman is, first and foremost, fun: a vivacious, funny dramedy about a video store clerk trying to make a documentary about the life of a Black actress typecast in “Mammy” roles. It’s clever, incisive, often quite sad, but always full of life. What more could you want?
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