More than just a gay pun: the changing nature of Australian queer film criticism

ABSTRACT

This essay looks at the critical reception of Australian queer cinema demonstrating the difference in reviews of queer Australian films. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Elliot, Stephan. 1994. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Sydney: Roadshow Distribution) and The Sum of Us (Dowling, Kevin, and Geoff Burton. 1994. The Sum of Us. Sydney: Southern Star) will be compared to films that came later in the 1990s, notably Love and Other Catastrophes (Croghan, Emma-Kate. 1996. Love and Other Catastrophes. Sydney: Fox Searchlight), The Well (Lang, Samantha. 1997. The Well. Sydney: Southern Star) and Head On (Kokkinos, Ana. 1998. Head On. Melbourne: Umbrella Entertainment). These later films managed to generate buzz on the queer film festival circuit as well as at general international film festivals. Their queerness attracts international LGBTQ audiences while, secondly, genre-related elements have the potential to attract a wider cinephile audience. I will utilise paratextual elements, particularly reviews during their film festival and theatrical runs, to demonstrate how they cross-over to wider audiences. In investigating their framing and reception, these films increasingly engage audiences through their genre signifiers. This essay demonstrates that the discourse around Australian queer cinema has matured to offer multi-faceted perspectives.

KEYWORDS:

• Film criticism
• queer cinema
• paratexts
• distribution
• Australian cinema

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Olympia Barron, Alex Gionfriddo and Catherine Gillam from the Australian Film Institute Research Collection for their assistance. Their enthusiasm for this research made this an enjoyable project to undertake. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback. Finally, I would like to thank Dr Alexia Kannas, Associate Professor Adrian Danks and the rest of the Screen Studies program at RMIT University for their invaluable support while I conducted this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Stuart Richards lectures at the University of South Australia in the School of Creative Industries. His first monograph The Queer Film Festival: Popcorn & Politics is published with Palgrave Macmillan. He has has previously worked with both the Melbourne Queer Film Festival and The San Francisco Frameline International LGBTQ Film Festival. He is on the board for Senses of Cinema and has previously been a host of Triple R’s Plato’s Cave.

ORCID

Stuart Richards http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9307-5858

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Film Institute Research Collection Fellowship Grant.