New queer cinema

"New queer cinema" is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound[1] magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s.

[6] Another influence on queer cinema was the Brazilian filmmaker Héctor Babenco, whose film Kiss of the Spider Woman, from 1985, depicted a man in prison, who is seduced by his cellmate.

[9] In the films of new queer cinema, the protagonists and narratives were predominantly LGBTQ, but were presented invariably as outsiders and renegades from the rules of conventional society, who embraced radical and unconventional gender roles and ways of life, frequently casting themselves as outlaws or fugitives.

[9] Drawing on postmodernist and poststructuralist academic theories of the 1980s, the new queer cinema presented human identity and sexuality as socially constructed, and therefore fluid and changeable, rather than fixed.

While not all identifying with a specific political movement, new queer cinema films were invariably radical, as they sought to challenge and subvert assumptions about identity, gender, class, family and society.

[9] Among the films cited by Rich were Todd Haynes's Poison (1991),[18][19] Laurie Lynd's RSVP (1991), Isaac Julien's Young Soul Rebels (1991), Derek Jarman's Edward II (1991), Tom Kalin's Swoon (1992),[20] and Gregg Araki's The Living End (1992).

Queer theory and politics were emerging topics in academic circles, with proponents arguing that gender and sexual categories, such as homosexual and heterosexual, were historical social constructs, subject to change with cultural attitudes.

[9] Other important examples of new queer cinema include the first feature film by a black lesbian, Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman (1996),[21][22] and Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together (1997).

[24][25] Rich, the originator of the phrase "new queer cinema", has identified the emergence in the late 2000s of LGBT-themed mainstream films such as Brokeback Mountain, Milk, and The Kids Are All Right as a key moment in the evolution of the genre.

[26] Both Troche and Mathews singled out Stacie Passon's 2013 Concussion, a film about marital infidelity in which the central characters' lesbianism is a relatively minor aspect of a story and the primary theme is how a long-term relationship can become troubled and unfulfilling regardless of its gender configuration, as a prominent example of the trend.