What Is New Queer Cinema?
A look back at B. Ruby Rich's era-defining concept
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If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you may have noticed the occasional reference to a concept called New Queer Cinema (including in last week’s post about Late Bloomers). I’ve written about ‘90s films before, but I’ve never done a deep dive into the concept itself. What is it? Where did it come from?
Film critic B. Ruby Rich first coined the term in a 1992 article in The Village Voice. (The article was later reprinted in Sight and Sound.) In the article, Rich recalls all of the new queer films she had seen at film festivals that year, defining and codifying what would become the canon of New Queer Cinema. The 1992 piece remains an illuminating artifact of cinema history, one that Rich expanded on in her 2013 book New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut, which includes additional essays about the topic.
In the first essay in the book, Rich describes the pre-history of New Queer Cinema, ie. the creation of queer cinema prior to the 1990s. During the Golden Age of Hollywood, queer cinema, at least as we understand it today, didn’t really exist. Though directors like George Cukor, Dorothy Arzner, and James Whale were semi-openly gay, they weren’t able to touch on queerness – at least not explicitly – in their films.
Instead, gay audiences read queerness into these films and picked up on the queer subtext likely to go over the heads of the general public. Gay and lesbian cinephiles kept track of which actors and actresses were gay, adding an element of kinship and desire to the viewing experience. As Rich puts it, queer cinema during this period wasn’t contained within the films themselves. Instead, “The category was a relational one, constituted by the interaction of viewers with films.”
Following WWII, American avant-garde cinema emerged. Much of it was queer in nature – such as the works of Andy Warhol – but it was rarely described as such. A cinematic revolution was also occurring in France around this time. Directors like Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet inspired a whole generation of filmmakers. Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour was a major influence on Todd Haynes, one of the biggest names of New Queer Cinema. In general, European art cinema had a more robust history of openly gay filmmakers and films, with the French New Wave being the most famous of these cinematic movements.
The Stonewall riots of 1969 generated a new era of queer filmmaking. Though we think of the riots as political rather than pop-cultural, they also had a connection to cinema. The first night of the riots took place on the day of Judy Garland’s funeral. Garland was perhaps the biggest gay icon of the time, and in fact, many Stonewall patrons used her name as a pseudonym when signing in to the bar. Speaking of that fateful night, Sylvia Rivera recalled, “I guess Judy Garland’s death just really helped us really hit the fan.”
Following the riots and the proliferation of the gay liberation movement, queer cinema began expanding as well. Documentaries and experimental films emerged as the most common mode of filmmaking during this period, as queer cinema still existed very much in the margins. Certainly the most famous queer filmmaker of this era, the great John Waters embodied the irreverent, campy, avant-garde filmmaking that eventually bled into the works of New Queer Cinema.
It was the 1980s that created the conditions that made New Queer Cinema possible. Rich describes the four elements that led to New Queer Cinema: the arrival of AIDS, Reagan, camcorders, and cheap rent. The horror of the AIDS crisis – and the government’s deadly inaction – devastated a generation of queers, generating a feeling of desperation within the community. Rich describes the necessity of filmmaking during this period like this: “For gay men, it was a matter of life or death, a question of mortality or immortality. For lesbians, it was a matter of empathy, a horror at what was happening to our/their gay brothers and outrage at society’s response.” Lesbians also felt compelled to create a new vision of lesbianism, as they had rarely been represented in films of the previous decades.
The arrival of camcorders was also a huge part of queer filmmaking during the decade. Everyday people were now able to easily record and distribute video, inspiring young creatives to utilize this new tool to revolutionize the medium. The condition of New York City influenced this cadre of filmmakers as well. The city was a harsh place that had been all but abandoned by the wealthy, leaving spaces for artists to make a go of things in their cheap lofts, not yet turned into condos. 1985 was a watershed moment for queer cinema, as both Desert Hearts and Desperately Seeking Susan premiered this year, following the radical vision of Lizzie Borden’s Born In Flames in 1983.
Finally, that brings us to the 1990s. March 20, 1992 saw the release of two “queer” films that typified the cinematic style of the era. The first was Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct, which was protested by gay rights groups for months. (The film has since become much more well-liked by queer viewers.) Derek Jarman’s Edward II, a modern retelling of the king’s gay life, came out the same day, and for Rich, represents a standout moment in the history of New Queer Cinema.
Days later, several exciting new queer films premiered at film festivals, marking the year as a turning point – one which began in the fall of 1991 at Toronto’s Festival of Festivals. If the exact definition of New Queer Cinema still feels unclear, Rich has some clarifying words. Though she concedes that these films vary significantly in style and in narrative, there are some unifying factors. Rich writes that these films all contain traces of “appropriation, pastiche, and irony, as well as a reworking of history with social constructionism.” In terms of tone and style, such films are “irreverent, energetic, alternately minimalist, excessive,” and most importantly “full of pleasure.”
Of course, as is true in most artistic movements, not all films and filmmakers were made equal. The gender divide was ever-present, even during this so-called cinematic revolution. Most of the films bought by large distributors and shown at large festivals were made by men, while lesbian films remained under the radar. As Rich put it in a 2013 interview with Haaretz Magazine, “The cultural capital is very constrained for lesbian filmmakers.” Indeed, all of the issues in broader society – sexism, racism, cultural gatekeeping – were present within New Queer Cinema.
Lesbians worked differently than men, who were interested in excavating and re-working the past. As Rich explains it, “where the boys are archaeologists, the girls have to be alchemists.” Lesbian filmmakers created something entirely new, though received little credit for it. Rich describes it as a sort of “lesbian camp,” but concedes that the best name for the movement is “the Great Dyke Rewrite.”
Rich concludes the essay with a note about the past in conversation with the present. “On celluloid and magnetic tape, just as in life and culture off-screen, the queer present negotiates with the past, knowing full well that the queer future is at stake,” she writes. She wonders if “the door would stay open long enough” to create lasting change within cinema, and perhaps society at large. Where do we go from here?
Rich returned to comment on the state of queer cinema in a 1998 essay entitled “What’s A Good Gay Film?” In this essay, Rich focuses not on how filmmaking has changed, but on how audiences’ appetites have. She writes that contemporary (as in late ‘90s) audiences no longer want to watch films that are dark or morally complex. Instead, they’re looking for something that reflects their own experiences, something that uplifts in the purest sense of the word. For Rich, this lack of curiosity presents problems. “If we limit ourselves to what we see in the mirror, we’re lost,” she writes. (In many ways, this point correlates with contemporary conversations about representation – or the limits thereof.) She worries that such a desire for sameness will cement the status quo, rather than inspiring the new queer worlds she hoped for back in 1992.
So what happened to New Queer Cinema? As Rich contends in the conclusion of her 2013 book, “first [New Queer Cinema] expanded into something, then nothing, and then everything.” Queer art no longer felt urgent as we entered the 2010s. Queer pop culture was no longer taboo, and instead became a much more visible part of the media landscape. Much of this occurred on television, where queer public figures and characters went from marginal to mainstream.
Of course, certain things were lost in all of this mainstreaming. As Rich argues, the result of this televisual revolution was “the demise of the boundary-pushing, ideology-challenging New Queer Cinema.” The demand for more subversive fare had lessened, and movie theaters started shutting down as viewers turned their eyes to the small screen. Still, many New Queer Cinema filmmakers have continued working into the 2000s, bringing their talents to other contexts.
One of the most significant shifts in LGBTQ cinema was the emergence of a movement known as New Trans Cinema. Rich suggests that these filmmakers represented a new wave of radical art that had been missing since the dissolution of New Queer Cinema. New Trans Cinema also “overturned the now settled theatrical and televisual norms that had arisen in the wake of NQC.” Notably, there is much more to be said about trans cinema that Rich doesn’t touch on, and others have written about it at length. Tristan Taormino first proposed the term in a 2008 article in The Village Voice, and others like Eliza Steinbock and Akkadia Ford, have written entire books on the subject.
Ultimately, Rich believes that the most important element in propagating the next wave of queer filmmaking is the audience’s appetite. In order for new and exciting cinematic (or televisual) forms to emerge, audiences need to be hungry for the next stage of creation. While some have wondered if the last decade or so represents the emergence of “postqueer” era, Rich disagrees. Instead, she imagines that we are not in an era of “post” but in an era of “pre” – that is, on the precipice of something new. Whether we have reached this moment of creation in 2025 remains unclear, but the conditions are ripe with possibility.
