About the Book
B. Ruby Rich designated a brand new genre, the New Queer Cinema (NQC), in her groundbreaking article in the Village Voice in 1992. This movement in film and video was intensely political and aesthetically innovative, made possible by the debut of the camcorder, and driven initially by outrage over the unchecked spread of AIDS. The genre has grown to include an entire generation of queer artists, filmmakers, and activists.
As a critic, curator, journalist, and scholar, Rich has been inextricably linked to the New Queer Cinema from its inception. This volume presents her new thoughts on the topic, as well as bringing together the best of her writing on the NQC. She follows this cinematic movement from its origins in the mid-1980s all the way to the present in essays and articles directed at a range of audiences, from readers of academic journals to popular glossies and weekly newspapers. She presents her insights into such NQC pioneers as Derek Jarman and Isaac Julien and investigates such celebrated films as Go Fish, Brokeback Mountain, Itty Bitty Titty Committee, and Milk. In addition to exploring less-known films and international cinemas (including Latin American and French films and videos), she documents the more recent incarnations of the NQC on screen, on the web, and in art galleries.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xv
Part I. Origins, Festivals, Audiences
1. Before the Beginning: Lineages and Preconceptions 3
2. The New Queer Cinema: Director's Cut 16
3. Collision, Catastrophe, Celebration: The Relationship between Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals and Their Publics 33
4. What's a Good Gay Film? 40
Part II. Bulletins From the Front
5. The King of Queer: Derek Jarman 49
6. True Stories of Forbidden Love 53
7. Goings and Comings, the Go Fish Way 58
8. Historical Fictions, Modern Desires: The Watermelon Woman 66
9. Channeling Domestic Violence: In the Den with Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon 72
10. The I.K.U. Experience: The Shu-Lea Cheang Phenomenon 76
11. Jonathan Caouette: What in Tarnation? 81
12. Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Tropical Maladies 88
13. Beyond Doom: Gregg Araki's Mysterious Films 92
14. A Walk in the Clouds: Julián Hernández 96
Part III. Genre Meets Gender
15. Lethal Lesbians: The Cinematic Inscription of Murderous Desire 103
16. Queering the Biopic Documentary 123
17. A Queer and Present Danger: The Death of New Queer Cinema? 130
Part IV. Queering a New Latin American Cinema
18. Preface to a History 141
19. Refashioning Mexican Screen Sexuality: Ripstein, Hermosillo, Leduc 145
20. Gay and Lesbian Traces 151
21. Mexico in the Forties: Reclaiming a Gender Pioneer 156
22. Revolution, Sexuality, and the Paradox of Queer Film in Cuba 159
23. Queering the Social Landscape 167
Part V. Expansions and Reversals
24. Ang Lee's Lonesome Cowboys 185
25. Itty Bitty Titty Committee: Free Radicals and the Feminist Carnivalesque 202
26. Queer Nouveau: From Morality Tales to Mortality Tales in Ozon, Téchiné, Collard 214
27. Got Milk? Gus Van Sant's Encounter with History 236
Conclusion 261
Filmography 285
Bibliography 297
Credits 307
Index 309
About the Author :
B. Ruby Rich is Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has written for scores of publications, from Signs, GLQ, Film Quarterly, and Cinema Journal to The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Nation, and The Guardian (UK). She has served as juror and curator for the Sundance and Toronto International Film Festivals and for major festivals in Germany, Mexico, Australia, and Cuba. The recipient of awards from Yale University, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, and Frameline, Rich is the author of Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement, also published by Duke University Press.
Review :
"I thought I knew a lot about gay movie history until I read New Queer Cinema and realized what a dunce I was. Ruby Rich has to be the friendliest yet toughest voice of international queerdom writing today. She's sane, funny, well-traveled and her aesthetics go beyond dyke correctness into a whole new world of fag-friendly feminist film fanaticism." - John Waters "Ruby Rich's New Queer Cinema is funny and deeply insightful - I loved going back to the good, bad old days of the '90s and seeing how those times (and their intense sense of urgency) exploded into an auteur-driven cinema today."--Christine Vachon, producer of the films Poison, Far from Heaven, and Boys Don't Cry "The greatest writer on New Queer Cinema! Buy Rich's book! It's amazing!"--Gus Van Sant "At last, an anthology of B. Ruby Rich's groundbreaking work on New Queer Cinema - a valuable historical archive with the added bonus of her current reflections on it. Smart, passionate, and engaging, her writing keeps alive the fine art of criticism that is so crucial to sustaining filmmakers and their audiences." - Ann Cvetkovich, author of Depression: A Public Feeling "Rich's book is both a portal into previous time of queer imagination and a history lesson on how the politics of an era resulted in the cinematic portrayal of the LGBT world as we see it now. New Queer Cinema is a living history..."--Chase Dimock, Lambda Literary Review "[D]aring and insightful... Recommended for film or queer-studies scholars, and for those strongly interested in post-1980s LGBTQ cinema."--Robin Chin Roemer, Library Journal "The vast majority of material here has been previously published but it is expanded, footnoted and indexed. Essays on Latin American and French LGBTQ cinema valuably take their place alongside write-ups of more familiar films... It's the opening chapter and conclusion that turn the collection into a book, with the conclusion a present-yet-prescient survey that encompasses the shift to gallery installations, the new trans cinema, digital developments and a resurgence of innovative fiction and documentary on the festival circuit that suggests 'we aren't after the fact at all... We are surely and absolutely... pre-.' [...] Whether you're a denizen, a habitue or a newcomer to queer cinema, Rich's writing will make you feel welcome, and offer something to discover." - Sight and Sound, July 2013
