Presh: How would you describe your artistic style?

Mia: My artistic style definitely started off with poetic dialogue, a form I find really helps tell personal stories in a more creative and experimental way. However, I feel my style is now best described as “experimental naturalism”; the experimental aspect comes from the technical visual aspects, and the naturalism comes from the performance. For instance, in my film “Phone Calls”, which I created for the Northampton 48-hour film challenge, the experimental aspect is presented through a split-screen, with corresponding audio to each separate side; the naturalism coming from my cousin Luke Baker’s performance. The use of split-screen is something I have experimented with before in an unreleased film called ‘Exposé’, in which I filmed myself continuously for around 2 hours, and edited the split-screen together to have contrasting shots throughout. Due to the lack of acting in that piece it is undeniably naturalistic, but my style of naturalistic directing for fiction work is definitely inspired by the theatre practitioner Katie Mitchell, and her process of intentions, which consequently allows directing actors to have more natural and realistic performances, both on stage and on screen.

P: Name three films or TV shows that have shaped your filmmaking style?

Mia: Katie Mitchell is definitely a key inspiration for both my film and theatre work, but my films of poetic dialogue are most definitely inspired by American queer artist Sadie Benning, specifically her shorts ‘Me and Rubyfruit’, ‘If every girl had a diary’, ‘it wasn’t love’ and ‘Jollies’. It’s her combination of poetic-esque dialogue and personal homemade shots which I think make for really good personal story-telling, and as a queer transgender artist myself, her queer narratives are something that draws me closer to her shorts. I find it quite hard currently to be inspired by existing films or shows because when I’m in a period of writing, I tend to restrict myself from consuming that. Rather, I’m very inspired by what I see visually, the way which light reflects on certain objects, natural compositions, and having certain ‘vibes’ radiate from songs; that, along with my own personal experiences (to form personal narratives) is what seems to shape my work, rather than other existing projects.

Presh: What advice would you give to fellow filmmakers?

Mia: The main piece of advice I’d give to fellow filmmakers is actually, create art. Film itself is an art form but I see lots of people replicate the same things over and over again. Due to the obvious influences of my style, my work is by no means unique, it has been done before, but I do try to be as creative with it as I can. I think many people’s creativity gets lost in focusing on technical aspects, and I think you can be really creative with that focus, but I think that should come from your own exploration. Sometimes we see really cool shots and we want to re-create that, and that is a really good thing to do, no one should gate-keep in film, but I think just also do that and more. Like how can you make that even better? I think also wanting to be like specific successful directors may limit your potential, that’s not for all cases by any means but I’ve seen that happen. Of course, it’s great to aim to be as successful as them, but I personally would advise, have fun and try to be as creative as you can be, that’s my main message.

P: Where do you think the biggest changes are needed within the film industry?

Mia: I think the biggest change needed in the film industry is a more acceptance of diversity, in both representation and style. To talk about the lighter one first, I think the film industry needs to be a lot more accepting of artistic filmmakers, just because it isn’t following rigorous guides of film theory, does not mean it’s bad. Also, I’m not really a fan of the structural hierarchy that comes with professional film-making, of-course when working with larger budgets and more complex technology experience and training is necessary, that’s not what I’m on about. I’m more focused on the idea that just because a person is more artistic in their style, or even just a younger creative, that doesn’t mean they are limited in their potential. I think those dedicating their lives to making their way through the hierarchy of the industry, in my experience, seem to be less accepting that creativity and skill do not necessarily come with age. As a trans-gender creative, I think now is such a good time to be producing projects, as there seems to be a rise of appreciation for LGBTQ+ artists. Especially when race and gender come into play, I do however think it’s disgusting how many white cis-het males view appreciation of ‘diverse’ voices as a threat, leading to the horrific casualisation of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. I think the industry itself is becoming a lot more diverse, but now what needs to happen is that everybody within the industry accepts that and appreciates that, instead of being bitter of under-represented voices being ‘given the microphone’.

P: Where can people view your work?

Currently, my work is available to watch on YouTube and updates on film-making and theatre productions are available on my Instagram @ahgeewiz.

Also Read: How Film Changed Me: On BFI Flare

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The phrase “queerbaiting” dates back to the 1990s, as a variation on the term “race-baiting”, which alluded to politicians, specifically, who were accused of saying deliberately inflammatory things about a particular group as a way of attempting to undermine certain political messages or ideologies. The idea here was to hope those who were “baited” would react in a way that could then be used to further push a message that certain ideas or opponents were too emotional, unprofessional, or reactionary. In this original form, queer theorists discussed situations in which politicians would try to use suggestions of queerness as a synonym for weakness, perversion, or being untrustworthy. 

Cut to the early 2010s, when users on Tumblr began to repurpose the phrase in a different context, thinking of the term “baited” as if it were like a fisherman applying a worm to a hook. To them, to be baited was to be tricked, to be lead to believe that queerness was present in the media they consumed without it ever being confirmed. It was no longer an accusation thrown at someone; instead, it was a suggestion that appeared in TV shows such as Sherlock, Supernatural, and Teen Wolf. Fans searched for hints of a relationship between Sherlock and his right-hand man John Watson and picked up on other characters suggesting Sherlock’s sexuality was something other than straight. Meanwhile, a quick search for the terms ‘Supernatural’ and ‘gay’ on YouTube brings up numerous videos with titles like “Dean Winchester being a disaster bi” or Dean and another character, Castiel, being “boyfriends for 20 minutes”. The character of Stiles Stilinski on the MTV show Teen Wolf courted the edges of confirmed queerness with throwaway lines and suggestive looks. I didn’t watch any of these shows back then, but looking at the compilations put together by fans, it’s easy to see where the annoyance stemmed from. It may be too much to connect it with another modish phrase of the past decade, “gaslighting”, but its effects are similar. Fans online drove themselves crazy trying to prove two dudes were boning, and the creators of those shows fed into it in an effort to have their cake and eat it too.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about films and TV shows that people read as queer without the creators intending it. Here, the creators of the shows in question heavily leaned into their fans’ queer readings and deliberately built them up in the hopes they could retain that loyal queer fanbase, the one that would make GIF-sets and publish fanfiction online, whilst not isolating the casual straight viewer who bulked out the ratings. 

In 2021, the term has moved further still from its original or even updated meaning. It has taken on life as a catch-all term for anything that might be disingenuously marketed towards a queer audience or anything that attempts to engage in any kind of queer aesthetic. For example, the actor and singer Nick Jonas was accused of queerbaiting by making appearances in gay bars to promote his music while playing a gay role on the short-lived boxing drama Kingdom. Beyond that, several other male celebrities such as Harry Styles and Timotheé Chalamet were accused of queerbaiting when they attempted to play with gender, mixing up what they wore on the red carpet, painting their nails, or generally doing anything to stray away from a classically heteromasculine look. It didn’t seem to matter, for the most part, that these stylistic shifts were relatively low stakes. Female artists, like, most recently, Olivia Rodrigo, are accused too if they appear intimate with friends or dancers. Artists who keep their sexuality or identity close to their chest are accused of being too vague, and of “baiting” queer fans by not giving them what they believe they are entitled to: confirmation. Those throwing the accusations don’t seem able to fathom that queerness is not always fixed, nor is it a commodity owned by a specific group.

In this way, the term has become a tool for cultural gatekeeping by queers, one that only allows those who are explicitly queer to mitigate who gets to be queer and how. It makes sense that, after going through often complex journeys to come to terms with their identity, a queer audience would feel protective over what they have found and would be defensive if they think it’s being exploited. However, this approach suggests that queerbaiting is akin to a quasi-form of cultural appropriation as if those who exist within the queer community share a single cultural heritage. In actuality, queerness is broader than these accusations give it credit for, and this approach reinforces outdated ideas that labels can adequately describe sexuality. When fans get angry that Billie Eilish claims she likes girls without explicitly stating whether that is as a lesbian or bisexual etc., they are erasing any opportunity for people, like me or you, to exist in the middle, to float between things in a way that feels natural and, most importantly, without definition. 

Still, beyond specific stars, the term has been launched at film studios too. Specifically, Disney, who offered an “exclusively gay moment” in their updated version of Beauty and the Beast only for it to be, unsurprisingly, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it embrace. They continued on this path with the first “openly gay” character in the MCU being an unnamed man at a group therapy session and then boasting about a lesbian kiss in the background of The Rise of Skywalker. Fans accused the Mouse House of luring queer audiences in with these announcements, taking their money, and then, when they were sitting in the cinema, they realised, like the fish with its mouth around the hook, they’d been tricked and were about to become dinner. 

Perhaps it doesn’t feel right that multi-million dollar corporations are tricking you into seeing a film or watching a show, but that doesn’t mean that queerbaiting is the problem. The issue, instead, sits with how much we are willing to let large companies dictate to us how we should see ourselves. What seems like a more worthy cause would be dismantling the structures that aid this type of behaviour by refusing to take heed of studios like Disney, who, by their own lexicon, are more interested in content and consumers than making any strides towards queer art or representation. 

At the root of the unease around alleged queerbaiting is actually a disdain for the capitalist courting the “pink pound”, the longstanding spending power of queer folk. Specifically, as far back as the 1980s, companies have sought to target the wallets of middle-class white gay men and lesbians, who have, historically, had a more considerable expendable income. Look at the longevity of the careers of artists like Madonna, Cher, or Kylie Minogue, which have been bolstered substantially by their queer fans. Where there is money to spent, capitalism will find it. Yet what makes those fans consider themselves “baited” is that the things they’re convinced to spend their money on, such as those aforementioned movies, don’t adequately include them. Perhaps the outrage that follows is more a person’s manifestation of humiliation that they ever let themselves believe a multi-million dollar company would offer them anything different.

Also Read: How FIlm Changed Me: On Things That Seem Gay (But Aren’t)

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I am, by far, not the first person to comment on the subtext here. Twitter has been aflame with questions of the boys’ queerness – much to the annoyance of its director – and The New York Times even referred to another queer Italian romance in titling their own review “Calamari by Your Name”. In fact, since preview images first appeared online in January 2020, comparisons to Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 Oscar winner have been abound, and that was before anyone was even aware of the content. But why? 

Queer audiences looking for queerness where they are told there is none is nothing new. The ‘queer coding’ within classic cinema has been well documented, specifically in Vito Russo’s seminal book and the subsequent documentary The Celluloid Closet. Over the past few decades, audiences have become hip to how gayness is portrayed on film, often in the margins, feeding into broad stereotypes, and often used for comic effect. In some cases, queer directors and writers, like Gore Vidal or Howard Ashman, would intentionally fuse a queer subtext into their work so that those audiences who shared similar experiences would catch it. Meanwhile, other filmmakers, often straight, would use the tell-tale signs of queerness as harbingers of evil; the cross-dressing buffalo bill in Silence of the Lambs, the gangster obsessed with his phallic walking cane in The Maltase Falcon, or every Disney villain in every animated movie they’ve ever made. What makes Luca different is that a queer reading of the film is supposedly an alternate one, not intended (or even, it would seem, baited) but, seemingly, some kind of coincidence.

A week after watching what I thought to be young love bloom between those two boys, I watched another Disney release on a dreary Sunday afternoon; Raya and the Last Dragon. Early on, Raya meets Namaari, a princess from a rival tribe who is also obsessed with dragons. The two immediately hit it off, and, within seconds, I texted my friend, “The girls in this dragon movie are lesbians, right?”  Their connection seemed palpable, and a quick Google found the film’s star, Kelly Marie Tran, agreed with me. Tran told Vanity Fair earlier this year that she interpreted the relationship between the two women as more than platonic. However, she was quick to point out that this wasn’t Disney’s official position. 

While Tran may have liked the queer reading of her film, other actors seem less keen. During a recent appearance on Variety’s Awards Circuit podcast, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie discussed how he had difficulty with the queer fan theories that came with the show. Instead of letting the heterosexual bromance live unfettered, Mackie thought queer audiences were “exploiting” something as “pure and beautiful” as homosexuality by running away with their crazy ideas that his and Sebastian Stan’s characters were anything more than good buds. While some defended Mackie – who has appeared in a fair amount of queer films and TV shows during his career – others took issue with his position. To what end can he, the actor playing the role, define how his character is read and received by audiences of any type? 

It seems essential, now, to consider Roland Barthes in this context. Barthes, a philosopher of the late 20^thCentury, thought the author to be “dead” when their work was published. He considered intention to be meaningless in the face of an audience’s interpretation; once the work is in the world, it no longer belongs to one person but to each person that accesses it in their own way. Barthes does away with any sense of authorial privilege and thus gives equal weight to any reading or interpretation of the text. So, to Barthes, to think that Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson are boning in-between episodes is as valid as Mackie’s assertion that they aren’t – maybe even more so. 

Some writers, of course, fly in the face of this. Vladimir Nabokov, who believed wholly that his vision of his work was the only one, is one example, while today, a particular children’s author might be another. Such an author – who, somewhat ironically, I will not name – has spent the years since publishing her wildly successful fantasy franchise holding it with a vicelike grip, repeatedly asserting her authorial privilege as though it were a God-given right. Suddenly, a character that had never been read as gay had, all the while, been a flaming homo right under our unsuspecting noses, and other characters, who could never be read as anything other than white, could have always been black if you, the reader, had not been so closed-minded. To this author, it is you that has been the problem by not seeing the non-existent signs. Instead, they ignore their own wildly poor attempts at diversity with their stereotypical and often offensive names for characters and their anti-Semitic undertones. Still, you, the reader, are the problem. But I digress. 

If the author, or the actor, or the producer, or the studio itself has no power to define how an audience interprets a text, then queer audiences, especially, are going to fill that gap. I suppose if the past decade has taught us anything it might be that queer audiences do and will find themselves in places they have not been specifically catered for, whether that is in fanfiction about Star Wars’ Poe and Finn, or in meticulously crafted fan art of Professor X and Magneto, or wild theories about the intimate relationships between boyband members. This type of instance, that “exploitation” of homosexuality, is more of an assertion, an attempt to say that I belong in this space. This Barthian attempt at claiming media that was not made for them, but to assert that their reading is valid and to search for clues to back it up, is an example of a broader cultural problem. Queerness has constantly, and is still constantly, asserting itself because it is – not just in the movies but in almost every facet of society – marginalised to specific accepted areas. The dominant culture has still yet to accept queerness into its lexicon due to the supposedly homophobic and mystical ‘middle-America’, or the concern not to risk the overseas box office, so queerness will nuzzle its way into the dominant culture and plant its flag. 

Towards the end of Luca, one of the boys reveals himself to be a sea monster. The other, so scared of the potential backlash from this, does not follow suit, and instead is the first to point and call a sea monster a “sea monster”. The look the two share is heart-breaking; their shared world no longer a haven for the pair; now, it is being used as a battering ram. It seems impossible for queer audiences not to find significance in this moment; the moment a secret is exposed, and you’re left out on a limb. The director may not have intended it, even going so far as to deny it, but the queerness is certainly there.

However, for a director to include illusions to queerness intentionally – well, that’s a different story. 

Also Read: How Film Changed Me: On Friendship

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We heard stories that, at college, it would be different, and so we spent our time waiting to get out. So when we hear those people ask, “Wouldn’t you go back if you could?” we retort with a simple; “Why would you want to?”

In the past few weeks, for reasons that weren’t at the time clear, I started watching a lot of television made for teenagers and tried to consider the high school experience I might have had today. On Disney+, Love, Victor has been premiering a new episode weekly, and, after repeatedly listening to ‘Drivers Licence’ on my daily walks, I checked out Olivia Rodrigo’s show on the streamer too, the ridiculously named High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. The former is a spin-off from 2018’s Love, Simon – a film I have a mixed relationship with – and the latter a spin-off of the wildly successful High School Musical franchise of my youth, sans Zac Efron’s boy-next-door charm. Neither show is particularly good, but neither is outrageously bad. And yet, I have become strangely addicted to both. 

This is not new for me. During my high school years, I would go home and watch the experience I wanted for myself play out on television. I religiously watched the melodramas of beautiful actors in their mid-twenties pretending to be seventeen on shows like 90210, The O.C., Gossip Girl, and, my all-time favourite, One Tree Hill. The latter (whose theme-tune was my ringtone from 2010-2012) followed a group of teens in the fictional town of Tree Hill, North Carolina. The central storyline focused on Nathan and Lucas Scott, two half-brothers locked in a bitter rivalry as both tried to be the star basketball player for their team, the Tree Hill Ravens. While Nathan had his upsides, Lucas was, for me, the ideal man. Played by Chad Michael Murray, he was, of course, gorgeous, but he was also sensitive, and his dream was to become a writer. He read Hemingway and Salinger whilst he wrestled with his abandonment issues. He was the furthest thing from the boys at my school, who may well have had abandonment issues too, but funnelled them into shouting faggot across the school field instead of into a pursuit of the great American novel. 

As I got a little older, aching to finish my GCSEs and get out, E4’s Skins became appointment viewing for me and my classmates. The character of Maxxie Oliver, the openly gay member of the wild and raucous central group, became my obsession. Maxxie not only had more to say than the “gay best friends” in every teen movie, but he also had a sexy encounter with a friend whilst on a trip to Russia, he had a female stalker that refused to accept his gayness, and he ended up snogging his skinhead bully after a woodland rave, rolling around on the mossy forest floor. He was more himself than I could ever be.

If Lucas Scott was the man I wanted, then Maxxie was the man I wanted to be. He was, of course, openly gay (something I kind of was) and actively sexual (something I definitely wasn’t). I saw his gung-ho nature, his sexual freedom, and thought one day, that would be me. Looking back, as important as Maxxie might have been to me, he was almost mythic, in that I’m not sure teens like him actually existed outside of drug-filled shows like Skins. At least, not where I grew up. 

Those shows, then, were aspirational for my teenage self; they showed roadmaps for leaving school, for figuring out the kind of boy I liked, for how to approach sex. These new shows are that for a new generation, only they’re a lot gayer. Love, Victor is about a gay kid figuring out his sexuality – something that never happened on One Tree Hill – and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series features some tender, if sanitised moments, of young gay love. Now, aged twenty-seven, I no longer need the affirmation these shows provide, no longer think of sex and men as aspirational ideas but rather as practical and routine problems. So why am I watching them? 

Last week, whilst I sat in the park with a friend, I wondered if I had been born both too late and too early. Coming of age in the early 2000s, the lingering effects of Section 28 peppered my high school experience and the onset of the “It Gets Better” movement was yet to arrive. I was too late for radical queer politics. Instead, it was all marriage and the military. But I was also too early to go to a high school that had a club for gay students, in which teenage queers had relationships. I was too early for shows that centred a teenage experience similar to mine. Two of my friends have younger brothers who are gay, and when they talk about them, I’m always struck by how self-assured they seem, especially sexually. They didn’t think that gay sex was some colossal mystery. They didn’t grow up thinking queer life was reserved for the future, for college or university. As the characters in these shows do, they believed that queerness not only exists in high school but is acknowledged. 

In her 2009 book The Queer Child, Kathryn Bond Stockton describes queer adolescence as like “growing up sideways”. Queer kids didn’t share the linear trajectory of their straight peers, and they knew it. Instead, she describes growing sideways as a mode of “irregular growth involving odd lingerings, wayward paths, and fertile delays.” Perhaps that is no longer the case. I grew sideward, but the kids on these shows don’t appear to be doing the same. They aren’t wholly as secure as their straight counterparts; Victor, for example, spends the entire first season (which concluded this past Friday) wracked with panic about his sexuality. Still, Victor feels more like a real teenager than Maxxie ever did. 

A few years ago, I watched a clip of Gloria Steinem on Oprah in which she said it is never too late to have a happy childhood, and her way of filling the gaps left by her parents was to write a list of all the things she didn’t have and use that as a list of things she needed to do for herself: “Going back to the past and giving yourself in the present, in an activist’s sense, what you realised that you lacked. The unconscious is timeless, stored in those brain cells is your entire childhood, and you can re-enter them and change it.“

It’s possible I’ve become obsessed with these shows because I have trouble reconciling the experience I feel I was robbed of. When I watched those shows as a teenager, I saw these people whose lives were filled with drama and emotion, whose love lives extended into complicated and tumultuous territory. I thought, rightly or wrongly, that that was what it was like to be a teenager and, while for me it wasn’t, for the kids on these shows now, it is. I’m trying to change my relationship with those years, to live a different version of them. Maybe now, when people ask if I would go back to my school days, my answer wouldn’t be why would I want to, but rather, I don’t need to.

Also Read: How Film Changed Me: On Needle Drops

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In the immediate, one would imagine, that might not be the case, and not just because overseas travel and social distancing will be with us for a while. Even before the pandemic, the London Film Festival, also programmed by the BFI, made efforts to extend its reach outside of the capital with a select number of more mainstream festival picks screened in cinemas around the country. In 2020 they moved beyond those safe bets to hotly anticipated films such as Chloe Zhao’s exquisite Nomadland and Francis Lee’s period romance Ammonite. Admittedly, these were not “nationwide” in the classic sense – i.e. available everywhere – but, rather, in 12 cinemas in major cities from Manchester to Edinburgh.

The idea of looking to the future, however, applies not only to the festival format but to the films themselves. For the most part, film festivals act as a springboard, as an open sea of mostly unvetted titles. Sure, quite a few of the more prominent films arrive with an element of prestige already bestowed on them by other festivals (some in this year’s Flare line-up have appeared at Outfest, TIFF, and more) but there is also a chance to uncover something new, something exciting and different. In that way, festivals can indicate what is to come by premiering fresh-faced films looking to establish themselves, and BFI Flare 2021, a festival that began in 1986 and dedicates itself to LGBTQ+ film, indicates that documentary is ramping up significantly. 

Rebel Dykes (June 2021) tells the story of lesbian activists with plenty of anti-nuclear protesting, sexual politics, and anti-Thatcher activism to boot. Directors Harri Shanahan and Sian A. Williams combine archive footage with interviews and animation to create a genuinely punk-feeling documentary that is an excellent antidote to mainstream films’ more assimilationist messaging. What’s also soothing is the trans inclusion within the radical lesbianism, which the documentary makes a point of addressing – this seems pertinent given the current state of trans rights and feminism in the UK. Elsewhere, Cured (TBC), a more typical feature, documents the campaign lead by LGBTQ+ activists to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It features hard-to-stomach descriptions of “therapy” thrust upon LGBTQ+ people over time, and interviews with those who fought to remove it. Meanwhile, Mama Gloria(TBC), a far smaller affair than the aforementioned two, follows Gloria Allen, a trans woman and activist in her Chicago home. Throughout the film, she meets up with those she has inspired, her old school friends, and her family to trace her life and legacy, creating a touching portrait of a too-often ignored icon. 

Less impressive, it might seem, is the fiction film on display. This is not to say that most weren’t, at the very least, enjoyable in some way, but for the most part they felt like somewhat derivative versions of things that have come before. By far the most original was The Obituary of Tunde Johnson (TBC), which follows a Nigerian-American teenager who is shot by police officers during a “traffic stop”. This leads Tunde (Steven Silver) to be stuck in a time-loop in which he is forced to live the same day repeatedly, where he is always killed – in differing scenarios – by a police officer, only to wake up back in his bed. The clever weaponizing of a Groundhog Day narrative places a viewer in constant fear and awareness of the police, which works to emulate the state of mind of a young black man, like Tunde, in modern America. Unfortunately, the melodrama surrounding this premise – that Tunde is secretly dating a hot, chiselled jock who has yet to come out – is far less exciting and innovative. 

Outside of this, films like Boy Meets Boy and Sublet both attempt to go for a mash-up of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy and Andrew Haigh’s Weekend, to varying results. Sublet, the marginally better of the two, struggles to establish what it really wants to say and flounders around in predictable plotlines and stereotypes. Boy Meets Boy trades in Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for two young gay men – one British and one German – and swaps out Vienna for Berlin as the two spend 10 hours together before one has to catch their flight back to the UK. The relative simplicity of films like this – that it’s just two people talking for two hours – is far harder to capture than it might appear, and neither can offer up much that is genuinely original. As for Firebird, the flashy and sexy period drama set in Soviet Russia, it feels more like something for a Sunday night on the BBC. It’s as if they want to capitalize on the success of recent romantic dramas like And Then We Danced or God’s Own Country (both of which screened at the festival in 2020 and 2017, respectively) but lack the authenticity to do so, instead offering something that feels lukewarm overall. It desperately wants the emotional weight of Portrait of a Lady on Fire within a military setting like Moffie, but unfortunately, all it does is remind you there are better films out there you could be watching. Speaking of other movies, both The Greenhouse and the semi-autobiographical Jump Darling try their best to bring some zazz but, for the most part, don’t quite stick the landing, even if both feature solid performances. Especially the latter, which brings us acting legend Cloris Leachman’s final performance, which is, of course, nuanced and touching. 

Finally, the most egregious of all might be Cowboys, an American drama starring Steve Zahn and Jillian Bell. It tells the story of a trans child, Joe (Sasha Knight), without really considering the trans perspective. Written and directed by a cisgender woman, Anna Kerrigan, the story revolves around how two thinly drawn parents, Troy and Sally (played by Zahn and Bell, respectively), each navigate the information that their child is trans. Sally refuses to believe it isn’t more than just a phrase and refuses to buy toys that aren’t “meant” for girls, whilst Troy, a temperamental alcoholic, is more accepting but is also facing his own battles. In light of this disagreement, Troy kidnaps Joe (who is constantly put in cheap wigs), and they set off for the Canadian border on horseback. In the end, Cowboys results to nothing more than a sensationalist drama for straight and cisgender folks that shuns the perspective of the queer child who should be at its centre. 

Ultimately, BFI Flare is uniquely positioned as a beacon of queer cinema in the UK and its highlighting of films like Rebel Dykes – which they previewed in 2016 – and their commitment to offering independent queer film a platform. It seems that, for all of us, 2020 has had an effect. Last year’s festival, which was one of the first to move online in mid-March as the UK went into lockdown, offered up the seminal documentary on trans representation in the media, Disclosure, as well as the aforementioned military drama Moffie. Other highlights included Isabel Sandoval’s much-lauded Linga Franca, Hong Khaou’s tender second feature Monsoon, and Oliver Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s dark and complicated Don’t Look Down. Now, just a year later, there are simply fewer films rearing and ready to go with the future of the distribution and the industry at large in flux. 

It may seem that, from my summations here, a lot of the entries into this year’s Flare festival were a little lacking, especially compared with last year, and that might not be entirely fair. I have to disclose my bias: as a queer person, I’m positioned to want a lot from my LGBTQ+ and Queer Cinema. That means that, when it disappoints, it really disappoints. I feel, when they aren’t perfect, like that famous clip of Tyra Banks: “I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you!” I’m sure the films I’ve discussed here will find their audience; there are many LGBTQ+ viewers out there desperate for something new who will see a glimpse of themselves within them. All of us are looking to the future; the future of film, festivals, and queer cinema. All of us want the best.  

Also Read: How Film Changed Me: On Kathryn Hahn

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And Then We Danced, a film by Levan Akin, is a tender story of first love between two men in the world of Georgian folk dancing. Upon its release in Georgia, it was protested and considered a ‘moral threat’ by conservatives in the country. With this in mind, Robyn’s 2018 dance hit ‘Honey’ accompanying this tantalising seduction feels even more potent. The link between queerness and music has long been noted, from the adoration of icons like Cher, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, and Diana Ross, to the likes of Beyoncé, Carley Rae Jepsen, and, of course, Robyn, whose music regularly reverberates of the walls in queer night clubs today. Music, in fact, is one of the first-time’s queer people felt they had some semblance of power, of having a say in something. In the 1970s, to get a disco track to be a hit, the song had to be playing in gay bars. This connection, to the upbeat sound and lyrics about oppression and loss, scared white heterosexual executives so much they that formulated a consigned effort to invalidate its success, and thus entered the ‘disco sucks’ crowd.

Music and cinema have also always been intrinsically linked. From silent movies accompanied by live pianists to the use of the ‘Unchained Melody’ in Ghost to Mr Blonde’s mischievous dance to ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’, many of the most famous scenes in film have been set to now equally renowned music. In queer cinema, however, the relationship between the music and the characters feels more tangible, something that works on multiple levels. In 1970, Kenneth Nelson performed a truncated version of gay icon Judy Garland’s ‘Get Happy’ in The Boys in the Band. Garland’s popularity amongst the gay community is practically unparalleled, the phrase ‘a friend of Dorothy’ was historically used to discreetly describe gay men in reference to Garland’s most famous starring role. In 1989, Longtime Companion, the first studio movie to discuss AIDS, has a character lip-sync to the Dreamgirls cast album while unpacking boxes. The Broadway musical, a roman-à-clef based on the story of The Supremes, was a bit hit in 1981 and was recently described as having a ‘piercing message of self-empowerment and self-love’ that appeals to queer folk, both then and now. 1994’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert features a whole host of disco and camp classics on its soundtrack as three drag queens travel across the Australian outback in a supped-up bus. In essence, the music acts as the sound of liberation, freedom, and unabashed queerness. 

Often, music in queer cinema works not only as a soundtrack for the experience of the LGBTQ+ characters on-screen, but acts as a signpost to the queerness that exists beyond the edge of the frame. Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood features a pivotal moment set to ‘Diamonds’ by Rihanna, a current icon for the gay community, idolised for her no-bullshit attitude and pop music prevalence. Or Xavier Dolan’s use of Lana Del Rey, famous for her musings on deadbeat men and ethereal ‘sad girl’ energy, in his Palme d’Or, winning Mommy. Luca Guadagnino not only featured new songs by queer-friendly Sufjan Stevens in his coming-of-age story Call Me By Your Name but also included ‘Love My Way’ by The Psychedelic Furs, a song that was written for those who were struggling with their sexuality in the eighties. While Desiree Akhavan’s tale of youths in conversion therapy, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, sees a moment of jubilance and freedom to the 4 Non Blondes song ‘What’s Up?’, whose lead singer, Linda Perry, famously performed with the word ‘Dyke’ scribbled on her guitar at the 1994 Billboard Music Awards. 

That brings us back to Robyn, the Swedish queen of Europop and recent RuPaul guest judge, who has risen to be a substantial icon for the queer community. She was recently described, by Tom Rasmussen for Another Man, as a woman who ‘gets it’, ‘it’ being the queer experience. Her lyrics cater to the ‘outcast’ and capitalise on ‘the exact tension between the agony, and the ecstasy inside the agony.’ Her music understands the unrequited, the existential, the messy, the dramatic, the murky areas between the lines, and as such appeals to a lot of what makes queer desire so specific. 

‘Honey’, which has been described by Robyn herself as being about a sweet and gloopy ‘state of mind instead of the actual substance’, features lyrics of delicate and sensual longing, a desire to provide and open up for a lover. In Merab’s case, he’s been taken in by the dark and brooding Irakli, his passion is seeping from his skin, his longing visible in each pained stare. In this moment, as the only two people awake late at night, they share an intimate moment so palpable, so crammed with sexual tension, that heart rates will pound along to the electronic beat. 

And Then We Danced is the latest in a long line of queer films that utilise that relationship between LGBTQ+ people and music, specifically their connection to the content and power that music historically brings. So often cinema, like music, is an act of translation. Queer people find a way to relate to the stories on screen that rarely represent them, but in those that do, it feels exciting and even liberating. For a soundtrack to acknowledge that musical connection is like acknowledging the whole notion of queer struggle and how music has been central to queer lives for years. 

And Then We Danced is available to rent / download now

Also Read: “Birds of Prey” and the Curse of Being Casually Queer

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However, a dominant swell of independent cinema (sometimes called New-Wave Queer Cinema) that took on identity, the intersection between sexuality and race, homophobia, our collective history, the AIDS epidemic, sex, and so much more came to the forefront. Yes, LGBTQ+ independent film left few stones unturned over the past ten years as it portrayed varied and nuanced experiences. Even so, there is still a significant lack of representation of disabled LGBTQ+ folk, as well representation of trans folk and people of colour is still substantially lower than it should be which will hopefully change in the decade to come.

These films from the past 10 years grappled the challenging decade it has been and found hope, anger, and desire in the process. Here are some of the highlights…

‘Pariah‘, dir. Dee Rees (2011) 

Dee Rees’ has become one to watch over this past decade, with her work on HBO’s Bessie and Netflix’s Mudbound, her hazy and fresh style landed her an adaption of Joan Didion’s The Last Thing He Wanted (scheduled for release next year). But it all began with Pariah, adapted from her earlier short film, it is a story of a teenager in Brooklyn navigating identity, first love, and familial pressures. 

‘Weekend‘, dir. Andrew Haigh (2011) 

In this early indie hit, Russell and Glen men meet at a bar and go home together. Over the following days the two battle with the idea of commitment, monogamy, intimacy, and love in Andrew Haigh’s debut film that is simple, subtle, and modern with a mixture of pathos and joy. 

‘Stranger by the Lake‘, dir. Alain Guiraudie (2013)

A French sexual thriller that dared to be bold and vivid, the film utilised graphic portrayals of sex and violence. The film revolves around a murder in a prime cruising spot and a sexual relationship that is complex and dangerous, passionate and risky. Featuring stark nudity, rising tension, and gorgeous cinematography, Stranger by the Lake is a sultry and dangerous ride. 

‘Tangerine‘, dir. Sean Baker (2015)

A genuinely original independent production shot entirely on iPhones, Tangerine is a brash, bold, and initiative film filled with humour and struggle. Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor star as two sex workers looking for an ex-boyfriend on Christmas Eve in LA, and their performances are deeply grounded and light up the screen with a flurry of energy and presence. Also, it’s the best queer Christmas movie to date!

‘Carol‘, dir. Todd Haynes (2015)

The slow, cold, burn of Todd Hayne’s Carol whipped people into a frenzy in 2015. The adaptation of famed lesbian author Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, the film saw Cate Blanchett’s housewife fall for Rooney Mara’s sensitive shop-girl in a wildly cinematic romance that could put classic cinema to shame. 

‘In Between‘, dir. Maysaloun Hamoud (2016)

The story of three women who share a flat in Tel-Aviv who have to navigate their conservative families and the cultural divide. One that leaves them influenced by the West but living in the Middle East – a situation that brings into question things like religion, sexual violence, tradition, sexuality, and female kinship. The director, Maysaloun Hamoud, had a fatwa issued against her for her frank depictions of sexuality, drugs, and womanhood.

‘Moonlight‘, dir. Barry Jenkins (2016) 

Taking the Best Picture Oscar at the 89th Academy Awards, Moonlight cemented itself into cinematic history. The film explored queer longing and desire from the black masculine perspective in a way that was tender with cinematography that firmly placed male beauty and black men at its centre.

‘120 BPM (Beats Per Minute)‘, dir. Robin Campillo (2017)

Boldly political and deeply enthralling, Beats Per Minute follows the Parisian branch of ACT UP in the 1980’s as they fight for visibility and recognition. It’s an elegy for the people who were lost and visceral protest for them too. Enthrallingly rich, sexual, personal, and queer BPM is queer cinema at its most perfect. 

‘A Fantastic Woman‘, dir. Sebastian Lelio (2017)

Sebastian Lelio brings his hazy glow to the story of Marina (Daniela Vega), a waitress and nightclub singer, who is grieving the loss of her boyfriend while also facing suspicion from the police that she was involved in his death. Vega’s performance is one of the best this decade with nuance and anger rolled into a mish-mash of jubilation and sadness.

‘God’s Own Country‘, dir. Francis Lee (2017)

Set in the Yorkshire countryside, Francis Lee’s protagonists find romance amongst premature lambs and blistering cold. Decidedly dark and moody, the film is beautifully tender with erotic sex in the mud, self-sabotage, and questions of commitment, xenophobia, and love. 

‘1985‘, dir. Yen Tan (2018) 

1985 flew mostly under the radar but packed an emotional punch into its short runtime. Adrian, (Cory Michael Smith) returns home to his family with some news he’s reluctant to tell them. Smith and Jamie Chung, who plays Adrian’s high school best friend, are superbly matched in this tribute to a generation of LGBTQ+ people who were abandoned. Brutally emotional and superbly considered, 1985 is a true revelation.

‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post‘, dir. Desiree Akhavan (2018) 

The decade brought with it a Vice President of America who believed in conversion therapy. Akhavan’s sweet, harrowing, mature, and underrated tale about a group of young people finding each other at that one of those camps was the perfect antidote. Both politically and emotionally engaging, Akhavan blends the format of a teen comedy with the prevalent spectre of right-wing bigotry as the film found joy in the kinship of queer folk, the awkward nature of teenage sexuality, and examined the evil within those that want to convert them.

‘Pain and Glory‘, dir. Pedro Almodóvar (2019) 

No list on Queer Cinema would be complete without Pedro Almodóvar and his deeply personal 2019 film about legacy, mortality, and memory was extraordinary. Through the vessel of Antoni Bandaras, Almodóvar creates a portrait of himself, his losses and his relationships with supreme precision and emotion. It is a master working at the height of his craft and it’s thrilling to watch. 

‘Portrait of a Lady On Fire‘, dir. Céline Sciamma (2019)

Radical and tender, Portrait of a Lady on Fire oozes with longing and passion. It’s part gothic novel and part feminist reclamation of the past. There is a trend of ‘repressed lesbian period dramas’ of late, but this film feels more modern than most movies released in 2019 with its approach to examining female autonomy and gaze, with an exceptional retelling of a famous Greek myth to-boot. A true must-see!

Honourable Mentions: And Then We Danced (2019) / End of the Century (2019) / Can You Ever Forgive Me (2018) / Sauvage (2018) / Paris 5:59: Theo & Hugo (2016) / Certain Woman (2016) / Nasty Baby (2015) / Grandma (2015) / Pride (2014) / Love is Strange (2014) / Lilting (2014) / Keep The Lights On (2012) / Kaboom (2010) 

Also Read: Rebel Without A Pulse, Art Without A Soul

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