Writer-director Georgia Oakley’s impressive directorial debut Blue Jean is a compelling character study set in northern England in 1988, as Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government is about to pass the notorious Section 28 of the local Government Act which stigmatized the nation's gay and lesbian population, stoking homophobia—both societal and internal—at the height of the HIV/AIDS... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: Gateways Grind ★★★1/2
The Gateways Club, or the Gates as it was known, was the centre of lesbian London for decades. A watering hole in the heart of Chelsea, it one of the only exclusively lesbian venues in London, frequented by a mix of women of all classes, including the likes of author Patricia Highsmith. Running from the... Continue Reading →
Mardi Gras Film Festival 2023 Review: In Her Words – 20th Century Lesbian Fiction ★★★
Chronicling key figures in lesbian fiction from the 1920s to the 90s, Lisa Marie Evans and Marianne K. Martin's In Her Words: 20th Century Lesbian Fiction is an exhaustive walk through individual author's lives and works using a range of new and archival interviews. Without preamble, we are thrown into a discussion of Radclyffe Hall’s... Continue Reading →
BFI Flare 2021 Film Review: My First Summer ★★★★ 1/2
There is something quintessentially Australian about finding privacy in a wide expanse of nature, and My First Summer, part of the 35th BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival, uses the depths of Australian forests as a furtive playground for big emotions. A teenage girl, Grace (Maiah Stewardson), witnesses a reclusive writer, Veronica Fox (Edwina Wren),... Continue Reading →
Sundance 2021 Film Review: The World to Come ★★★★
Part of Sundance 2021's Spotlight program, director Mona Fastvold's Queer Lion-winning The World to Come, adapted from a short story by Jim Shepard, immerses us in the bleak daily life of a contemplative mid-nineteenth century woman, Abigail (Katherine Waterston), living on the stark, unforgiving Northeastern frontier with her husband Dyer (Casey Affleck). The film opens... Continue Reading →
