Click here to visit the full interactive version of the above map.

As identity-based festivals, queer film festivals have a specific relationship to the audience to which they cater. More specifically, most of these festivals have had a strong connection to the political and social movement behind the lesbian and gay/queer agenda and try to maintain this relationship between cultural event and political framework [...]. Because of this history, queer film festivals have a strong tradition of a nuanced critical inquiry into the interconnections of cultural event management, community politics, nation state politics, funding and marketing strategies, and organizational structures [...]. [From Skadi Loist and Marijke de Valck, 'LGBT / Queer Film Festivals', Film Festival Research Network, last updated November 2012]

Festivals are the primary markets for international queer film, but they do not simply acquire and screen the films they show; they actually create the economic conditions that enable their production. This is not to imply that queer internationalism is merely inauthentic or commercial and thus without any kind of political viability. Rather, what it indicates is that scholars, activists, and festival directors must begin to look at the economy of queer cultural production as an essential element of queer collectivities and the institutions they form. Conceiving of an international queer community through cultural circulation and consumption begs significant questions about how U.S. audiences understand the role of the festival in defining a gay and lesbian class identity within this global economy. [From Ragan Rhyne, 'The Global Economy of Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals', GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Volume 12, Number 4, 2006]

As the above two scholarly excerpts indicate, the subject of film festivals is one which raises numerous issues of central importance to cultural studies more generally. For this reason, as well as to celebrate the work of scholars who have shared their findings in particular corner of this field online, Film Studies For Free is delighted to announce that the latest set of links to open access queer film studies that it has created for its sibling Global Queer Cinema website is devoted to the topic of Queer Film Festival Studies. You can visit numerous earlier FSFF entries on film festival studies by clicking here.

This most recent collection in the GQC Resources section includes a link to the full, interactive, version of the map at the top of this entry, created by pioneering film festival scholar Skadi Loist (co-founder, with Marijke de Valck,  of the Film Festival Studies Network), which shows 256 LGBT/queer film festivals existing globally since 1977.

For live-link access to all the below resources, please visit this webpage.

• Chris Berry, 'My Queer Korea: Identity, Space, and the 1998 Seoul Queer Film & Video festival', Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, Issue 2, May 1999
• Noa Ben-Asher, 'Screening Historical Sexualities: A Roundtable on Sodomy, South Africa, and Proteus',Pace Law Faculty Publications, 2005. Paper 589
• Kaucyila Brooke, 'Dividers and Doorways [on the locational politics of Los Angeles's Gay and Lesbian film festival]', Jump Cut, no. 42, December 1998, pp. 50-57
• Phillip B. Cook, 'Gay Sundance 2013: The Year Ahead in Independent Queer Cinema', The Blog, Huff Post Gay Voices, January 17, 2013
• Michael Guillén, The Evening Class blog, 2006-present
• Mel Hogan, '21 years of image & nation: legitimizing the gaze', Nouvelles «vues» sur le cinéma québécois, no. 10, Hiver 2008-2009
• Jamie June, 'Is it Queer Enough?: An Analysis of the Criteria and Selection Process for Programming Films within Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Film Festivals in the United States', MA Thesis, University of Oregon, August 2003
• Alice Kuzniar, 'Schwul-lesbisches Kino aus Deutschland', in: Bildschön: 20 Jahre Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage Hamburg, ed. by Dorothée von Diepenbroick and Skadi Loist (Hamburg: Maennerschwarm Verlag, 2009)
• Hui-Ling Lin, Bodies in Motion: The Films of Transmigrant Queer Chinese Women Filmmakers in Canada, PhD Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2011
• Skadi Loist, 'Precarious cultural work: about the organization of (queer) film festivals', Screen, 52.2, 2011
• Skadi Loist and Marijke de Valck (2010). “Film Festivals / Film Festival Research: Thematic, Annotated Bibliography: Second Edition.” Medienwissenschaft / Hamburg: Berichte und Papiere 91 (2010). (19. May. 2010 (sections: 1. Film Festivals: The Long View; 2. Festival Time: Awards, Juries and Critics; 3. Festival Space: Cities, Tourism and Publics; 4. On the Red Carpet: Spectacle, Stars and Glamour ; 5. Business Matters: Industries, Distribution and Markets; 6. Trans/National Cinemas; 7. Programming; 8. Reception: Audiences, Communities and Cinephiles; 9. Specialized Film Festivals; 10. Publications Dedicated to Individual Film Festivals; 11. Online Resources; Contact / Bio), 2008
• Skadi Loist, 'Queer Film and the Film Festival Circuit', In Media Res, September 14, 2010
• Skadi Loist, 'Das Queer Cinema und die Bedeutung lesbisch-schwuler Filmfestivals: Monika Treut im Interview mit Skadi Loist'n: Bildschön: 20 Jahre Lesbisch Schwule Filmtage Hamburg. Eds. Dorothée von Diepenbroick, and Skadi Loist. Hamburg: Männerschwarm, 2009. pp. 12–20
• Skadi Loist and Marijke de Valck, 'Film Festival Studies: An Overview of a Burgeoning Field', in: Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit. Eds. Dina Iordanova and Ragan Rhyne. St. Andrews: St. Andrews Film Studies, 2009. pp. 179–215
• Scott McKinnon, 'Taking the Word ‘Out’ West: Movie Reception and Gay Spaces', Participations, Volume 7, Issue 2 (November 2010) 
• Kelly McWilliam, 'We're Here All Week': Public Formation and the Brisbane Queer Film Festival. Queensland Review 14(2), 2007:pp. 79-91
• Jenni Olson, 'Film Festivals', GLBTQ: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. 2002. 24 February 2007
• Ricardo Peach, Queer Cinema as a Fifth Cinema in South Africa and Australia, PhD Thesis, University of Technology, Sydney 2005
• Renee Penney, Desperately Seeking Redundancy? Queer Romantic Comedy and the Festival Audience, PhD Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2010
• Mel Pritchard, 'the big queer film festival list', QueerFilmFestivals.org
• Marc Siegel, 'Spilling Out onto Castro Street', Jump Cut No. 41 (May), 1997
• Amy Watson, Being Inappropriate: Queer Activism in Context, MA Thesis, Central European University 2009
• Gerald J. Z. Zielinski, Furtive, Steady Glances: On the Emergence and Cultural Politics of Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals, PhD Thesis, McGill University, August 2008
• Ger Zielinski, 'On the production of heterotopia, and other spaces, in and around lesbian and gay film festivals', Jump Cut, No 54, Fall 2012
• Ger Zielinski, '"Queer Film Festivals." LGBTQ America Today: An Encyclopedia. Eds. John C. Hawley, and Emmanuel S. Nelson. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2009. pp. 980–984
• Ger Zielinski in Conversation with Stephen Kent Jusick, Executive Director of MIX Festival of Queer Experimental Film and Video, FUSE Art Culture Politics (summer issue, 2010), pp. 16-23 

"I have chosen images rather than words for the act of naming myself an artist and a lesbian because the level of meanings possible for images and image conjunctions seemed richer and held more ramifications" Barbara Hammer

Film Studies For Free today presents a tribute to the remarkable American, experimental filmmaker and activist Barbara Hammer. The tribute takes the form of a listing of online videos and scholarly links to studies of Hammer's work, as well as of related queer film and politics.

Hammer is seventy-one years old, still making films and still protesting against injustice and censorship. In 2010, she published her wonderful autobiography, HAMMER! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life, which addressed her personal history and philosophies on art (see a review here).

FSFF says, "Thank you, but... keep it up, please, Barbara! Your work and activism is needed now more than ever." (This blog can be a rather greedy and merciless task-mistress at times...)

For some time now, Film Studies For Free has been enjoying the videos that the British Film Institute has been posting at BFI Live, its online video channel exploring film and TV culture. There are lots of videos worth seeing at the site but, below, FSFF has singled out and directly linked to some which are especially deserving of the attention of film scholars.

Film Studies For Free was very sad to hear of the death at 58 of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, one of the founders of the discourse of 'queer theory', and an inspirational teacher and critic.

Like many other film researchers, some of FSFF's author's own writing on queer films was deeply influenced by Sedgwick's brilliant exploration of the epistemology of the closet.

In memory of Sedgwick, FSFF has assembled a webliography, below, of links to pieces of high quality, freely accessible, scholarly writing (or recordings/videos) on the web on the topic of queer/glbt films and/or queer film theory, a number of which, unsurprisingly, employ her critical insights. Further links added since original post: last updated June 2, 2009.

• John S. Bak, 'Suddenly Last Supper: Religious Acts and Race Relations - Tennessee Williams's 'Desire',Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 4, No. 2, Fall 2005


• John Bannister, 'Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Williams, and Susan Sontag: Campaigners of Camp and the Carry On films', Forum, Issue 4, Spring 2007
  

• Harry M. Benshoff, 'Notes on Gay History/Queer Theory/Gay Film'


• Chris Berry, 'East Palace, West Palace: Staging Gay Life in China', from Jump Cut, no. 42, December 1998, pp. 84-89


• Chris Berry, 'My Queer Korea: Identity, Space, and the 1998 Seoul Queer Film & Video festival', Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, Issue 2, May 1999
  

• Orla Juliette Borreye, 'The Significance Of The Queer And The Dog In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros (2000): A Masculinity At War', Wide Screen Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009

• NEW R. Bruce Brasell, 'The Making of "Monsters": The Queer as Producer', from Jump Cut, no. 40, March 1996, pp. 47-54
  

• Patrick S. Brennan, 'Cutting through Narcissism: Queer Visibility in Scorpio Rising', Genders 36, 2002


• Michael Bronski, 'From The Celluloid Closet to Brokeback Mountain: The Changing Nature of Queer Film Criticism', Cineaste, 2008


• Stella Bruzzi, 'The Talented Mr Ripley', EnterText 1.2, Spring 2001


• Norman Bryson, 'Todd Haynes's Poison and Queer Cinema', Invisible Culture - An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture Issue 1, Winter 1999


• Kathy Burdette, 'Queer Film Theory - Bibliography'


• Alain Chouinard, 'Queering the Québécois and Canadian Child in Jean-Claude Lauzon’sLéolo', Synoptique13, February 2009


• Lesley Chow, 'The Double Standard: The Twins of Two-Faced Woman and Sylvia Scarlett,' Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 59, February 2008
  

• Douglas Crimp, 'Getting the Warhol we Deserve: Cultural Studies and Queer Culture', Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies, 1999
  

• Rick Curnette, 'Child's Play: The Pixelvision Videos of Sadie Benning', The Film Journal, Issue 4


• Belidson Dias & Susan Sinkinson, 'Film spectatorship between queer theory and feminism: Transcultural readings', Paper for InSEA on Bridge - 7 European Regional Congress 1st - 6th July 2004 Istanbul - Cappadocia
  


• Richard Dyer, 'Homosexuality in Film Noir', from Jump Cut, No. 16, 1977, pp. 18-21


• Tanfer Emin-Tunc and Nichole Prescott, 'Glen or Glenda: Psychiatry, Sexuality, and the Silver Screen', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 41, August 2003
  

• NEW Bryan Ray Fruth, 'Media Reception, Sexuality Identity, and Public Space', e-PhD Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, 2007
  


• Jane Gaines, 'Deviant Eyes, Deviant Bodies: Queering Feminist Film Theory', from Jump Cut, no. 41, May 1997, pp. 45-48


• Stefan Jack Garel, 'Queer Bodies and Settlements', (e-PhD Thesis: University of Exeter, 2008)


• 'Gays, Lesbian, and Transgendered People in Motion Pictures: A Bibliography of Materials in the UC Berkeley Library'


• David Gerstner, 'Queer Modernism: The Cinematic Aesthetics of Vincente Minnelli', Modernity, Vol. 2, 2000


• Michael Goddard, 'Beauty Lies in the Eye (So Why Can't I Touch It?)', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 2, No. 25, 1998


• Andrew Grossman, 'Twelve Tone Cinema: A Scattershot Notebook on Sexual Atonality', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 43, February 2004


• Julie Grossman, “The Trouble with Carol: The Costs of Feeling [On Todd Haynes' Safe]', Other Voices 2.3 January 2005


• Adam Hartzell, 'Queer Pal For The Straight Gal - Wanee & Junah and Queer Friendship', The Film Journal, Issue 7


• Todd Haynes interviewed by Richard Dyer [audio recording from the Tate Modern], 'Double Indemnity: Todd Haynes/Edward Hopper' (4 June 2004)


• Todd Haynes's film: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987)


• Zoë Heyn-Jones, 'Eye and Brain, Torn Asunder: Reading Ideology in Sally Potter’s Orlando', Synoptique, 11, March 12, 2008
  

• NEW In Media Res GLBT media-themed week, April 21-25, 2008


• Fiona Jenkins, 'Grief's Testimony: On Almodóvar’s All About My Mother', Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture, Vol. 4, Number 2, August 2007


• Jamie June, 'Is it Queer Enough?: An Analysis of the Criteria and Selection Process for Programming Films within Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Film Festivals in the United States' (e-Thesis)


• Dmetri Kakmi, 'Queer Cinema: A Reality Check', Senses of Cinema, 2000


• Peter Kemp, 'Bi-Polar Gender-Blender: Sylvia Scarlett,' Senses of Cinema 22, Sept-Oct 2002


• Ewan Kirkland, 'Romantic Comedy and the Construction of Heterosexuality', Scope Issue 9, 2007


• Kevin B. Lee, 'Madchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, 1931)'


• Dennis Lo, 'The Politics and Aesthetics of “Asian American” Sexuality in Ang Lee’s Cross-Cultural Family Dramas: A Case Study on The Wedding Banquet and The Ice Storm', Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies, Vol. 1, 2008


• Patricia MacCormack, 'Barbara Steele's Ephemeral Skin: Feminism, Fetishism, and Film', Senses of Cinema, September 2002


• Patricia MacCormack, Pleasure, Perversion and Death: Three Lines of Flight for the Viewing Body, Transmat Online Book


• James MacDowell, 'What Value is There in Gus Van Sant's Psycho?', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 7, 2005


• Stephen Maddison, 'Pedro Almodóvar and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: the Heterosocial Spectator and Misogyny', Chapter 4 of Fags, hags, and queer sisters : gender dissent and heterosocial bonds in gay culture (New York : St. Martin's, 2000)


• Joseph McBride, 'George Cukor: The Valor of Discretion', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 32, April 2001
  

• Deborah Mellamphy, 'The Paradox Of Transvestism In Tim Burton’s Ed Wood', Wide Screen Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009
  


• Frann Michel, 'The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love', Cineaste, Vol. 21, No. 4, 1995


• D.A. Miller, 'Anal Rope'
  

• D. A. Miller, 'La Ronde', Film Quarterly, Spring 2009
  

• Daniel Mudie Cunningham, 'Driving into the 'Dustless Highway' of Queer Cinema', Film Journal, 2002


• Rebecca Panosky, 'Dorothy Arzner and Gender Representation.” In: “International Female Film Directors: Their Contributions to the Film Industry and Women's Roles in Society.” Chapter 4 of e-Thesis


• Susan Pelle and Catherine Fox, 'Queering Desire / Querying Consumption: Rereading Visual Images of ‘Lesbian’ Desire in Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art', Third Space, Vol. 6 Issue 1, Summer 2006


• Matthew Ogonoski, 'Queering the Heterosexual Male in Canadian Cinema: An Analysis of Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Léolo', Synoptique, 13, February 2009


• Ryan Powell, 'Putting on the Red Dress: Performative Camp in Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows,' Forum, Issue 4, Spring 2007


• Kate Rennebohm, 'Queering Childhood: An Examination of Claude Jutra’s Dreamspeaker', Synoptique 13, February 2009


• Elena del Rio, 'Performing the Narrative of Seduction: Claire Denis's Beau Travail', Kinoeye, Vol. 3, Issue 7, Spring 2003


• Julian Savage, 'The Conscious Collusion of the Stare: The Viewer Implicated in Fassbinder's Fear Eats the Soul,' Senses of Cinema, 16, Sept-Oct 2001


• Heide Schlüpmann and Karola Gramman, 'Mädchen in Uniform', trans. Leonie Naughton, Screening the Past, 12 January 1998
  

• NEW Ian Scott Todd, 'Outside/In: Abjection, Space, and Landscape in Brokeback Mountain', Scope13, February 2009
  


• Neera Scott, 'Sublime Anarchy in Gus Van Sant's Elephant', Senses of Cinema, 2005


• Steven Jay Schneider, 'A Tale of Two Psychos', Senses of Cinema, 2000


• Yael Sherman, 'Tracing the Carnival Spirit in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Feminist Reworkings of the Grotesque', Third Space, Vol. 3, Issue 2, March 2004


• Anneke Smelik, 'Gay and Lesbian Criticism'


• Anneke Smelik, 'Art Cinema and Murderous Lesbians'


• Anneke Smelik, 'The Carousel of Genders'

• NEW Carter Michael Soles, Falling Out of the Closet: Kevin Smith, Queerness, and Independent Film, e-Thesis University of Oregon, 2008
  

• Irini Stamatopoulos, 'Ang Lee's Cowboys', Offscreen Journal, Volume 11, Issue 2 (February 28, 2007)


• K. E. Sullivan, 'Ed Gein and the Figure of the Transgendered Serial Killer', from Jump Cut, no. 43, July 2000, pp. 38-47


• Denise Tse Shang Tang, 'A Dialogue on Intimacy with Chan Kwok Chan in Yau Ching's Ho Yuk: Let's Love Hong Kong', Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context Issue 14, November 2006


• Donato Totaro, 'Psycho Redux', Offscreen Journal, 2004


• Evangelos Tziallas, 'Looking Beneath the Skin: Reconfiguring Trauma and Sexuality', Stream: A Graduate Journal of Communication, Spring 2008 1(1)


• Justin Vicari, 'Reading/Watching Fassbinder', Film Journal, Vol. 1, No. 13, Winter 2006


• Amy Villarejo, 'Interview with Tish Pearlman for Out of Bounds/Cornell University' [about Queer film and queer film theory] RealPlayer file, 29 mins 30 seconds


• Nicholas de Villiers, 'Glancing, Cruising, Staring: Queer Ways of Looking', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 57, August 2007


• Nicholas de Villiers, '”The vanguard - and the most articulate audience”: Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters', Forum, Issue 4, Spring 2007
  

• Adam P Wadenius, 'The Monstrous Masculine: Abjection And Todd Solondz's Happiness', Wide Screen Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009
  


• Tamsin Whitehead, 'Rejecting the Margins of Difference: Strategies of Resistance in the Documentary Films of Pratibha Parmar', Third Space, Vol. 7, Issue 2, Winter 2008


• Damon Young and Gilbert Caluya, '”A Vessel of Imagery”: An Interview with Gregg Araki',Senses of Cinema, 2005

P.S. Another set of must-reads from the Reverse Shot website - just click on the film-title links below for some great reading on queer cinema and television: