Queerama: A Century of Gay Rights and Desires on Film [DVD]
- Submitting institution
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Goldsmiths' College
: A - Media, Communications and Cultural Studies (MCCS)
- Unit of assessment
- 34 - Communication, Cultural and Media Studies, Library and Information Management : A - Media, Communications and Cultural Studies (MCCS)
- Output identifier
- 1463
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
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- Month
- March
- Year
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Queerama was underpinned by Asquith’s research into the ways in which LGBTQI people have been represented in British television documentaries, soaps, cinema, online video, news, amateur filmmaking and home video throughout the legal changes and social shifts of the 20th century. Asquith led the research, produced and directed the film, and was one of three editors, employing filmmakers Campbell X and Mike Nicholls to ensure the research process was enhanced by difference._x000D_
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The films were mainly found in the BFI archive. From the first known overt representation of homosexuality in 1919 to the coverage of the governments introduction of pardons for prosecuted gay men in 2017, the films fell into three categories: the overtly queer, the sub-textually queer and the unintentionally queer. _x000D_
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The montage of these fragments remembered forgotten histories, connected the past to the present and created new stories about queer lives. The film is structured thematically rather than chronologically to make the argument that progress is not linear and queer lives don’t wait around for the law to be changed. The theory of queer temporality in practice. Moments and phases of persecution and freedom come and go throughout the century. Gender is proved to have been a battleground between the experiences of the individual and societal heteronormativity, at least as long as film has existed. _x000D_
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A queer methodology emerged whereby the team as queer producers use their experiences of not being seen, or working hard to find themselves on screens, applying those skills to create a history retrospectively, which does not remember the queer person as a freak, pervert, criminal or victim. Working with archive powerfully transmits the idea that practice IS research, as re-working old films simultaneously acknowledges the text as context and repurposes and builds on the meanings it contains.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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