What do you think?
Rate this book
Little Joe: A book about queers and cinema mostly
The cult periodical Little Joe, published as a limited-edition zine from 2010 to 2021, challenged the mainstream narrative of film history with a rebellious, queer perspective. Rather than reviewing new releases, it explored forgotten and overlooked films and celebrated a diverse spectrum of cinema – from obscure art films to porn to Hollywood classics – as worthy of critical debate. Stubbornly print-only, Little Joe was notoriously hard to find, privileging word-of-mouth distribution akin to the films it championed. This volume, compiled by editor-in-chief Sam Ashby, brings together the best of its previously elusive texts and proposes a new, alternative cinematic canon drawn from the fringes of taste and style.
512 pages, Paperback
Published April 22, 2024
15 people are currently reading
170 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 30, 2024
I'm the first review? Wow.
The deluge of namechecks is just overwhelming. Ben Whishaw endorsement on the back cover. And inside: Peter Strickland, William Jones, John Greyson, Shu Lea Cheang, Scott Treleaven, Rosa von Praunheim, Ira Sachs, Kevin Killian... ok I've said enough.
Some of the articles could use footnote updates though. For example, William Jones' piece on Fred Halsted, dated 2010, ends by lamenting how difficult it was to see Halsted's films. This has changed significantly, after the publication of Jones' Halsted Plays Himself. Halsted's three major films are now available to stream:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/halsted
Most of this is at least quite interesting. But when queer academics have to ruminate about "turn[ing] darkness into an opportunity for resistance, protest, and struggle", and the "unintuitive turn to illegibility and darkness", I have to put down the book immediately and go put on my '90s black Ramones/ACTUP-style leather jacket, despite the heat. I suppose I'm just intuitively unintuitive.
The deluge of namechecks is just overwhelming. Ben Whishaw endorsement on the back cover. And inside: Peter Strickland, William Jones, John Greyson, Shu Lea Cheang, Scott Treleaven, Rosa von Praunheim, Ira Sachs, Kevin Killian... ok I've said enough.
Some of the articles could use footnote updates though. For example, William Jones' piece on Fred Halsted, dated 2010, ends by lamenting how difficult it was to see Halsted's films. This has changed significantly, after the publication of Jones' Halsted Plays Himself. Halsted's three major films are now available to stream:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/halsted
Most of this is at least quite interesting. But when queer academics have to ruminate about "turn[ing] darkness into an opportunity for resistance, protest, and struggle", and the "unintuitive turn to illegibility and darkness", I have to put down the book immediately and go put on my '90s black Ramones/ACTUP-style leather jacket, despite the heat. I suppose I'm just intuitively unintuitive.
July 21, 2024
Loved it. Will be going back to it for years.
September 6, 2024
A beautiful, messy tome of raw and fleshy celluloid queerness — the design of this book along with its rich content makes it feel almost alive!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews