Immortal, Invisible: Lesbians and the Moving Image

by Tamsin Wilton

Immortal, Lesbians and the Moving Image is the first collection to bring together leading film-makers, academics and activists to discuss films by, for and about lesbians and queer women. The contributors debate the practice of lesbian and queer film-making, from the queer cinema of Monika Treut to the work of lesbian film-makers Andrea Weiss and Greta Schiller. They explore the pleasures and problems of lesbian spectatorship, both in mainstream Hollywood films including Aliens and Red Sonja , and in independent cinema from She Must be Seeing Things to Salmonberries and Desert Hearts . The authors tackle tricky can a film such as Strictly Ballroom be both pleasurably camp and heterosexist? Is it ok to drool over dyke icons like Sigourney Weaver and kd lang? What makes a film lesbian, or queer, or even post-queer? What about showing sex on screen? And why do lesbian screen romances hardly ever have happy endings? Immortal, Invisible is splendidly illustrated with a selection of images from film and television texts.

Genres: LGBT, Nonfiction, Lesbian

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 19, 1995

Reviews

[Zoë · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some excellent analysis of the representation and circulation of lesbians onscreen, but some of the films discussed are a bit dated now.