Abstract
In this chapter, Brett questions the restrictive taxonomic tendencies of ‘queer cinema’ in France and Italy, and considers whether the increase in queer documentary in the first decade of the new millennium alters the dynamics of this representational space. Brett exposes the in/visibility of ‘place’ in these two contexts, which have an overlapping cinematic history and approach to the accommodation of ‘difference’. These comparisons are positioned within the ‘post-queer’, which reflects the performance of ‘place’ as a divided rather than binary ‘space’. Proust’s ‘lieu factice’ [artificial place] is offered as a way of elucidating these divisions in a postmodern world, where the ‘real’ is ever distant. Its modernist angle is introduced as a dynamic framework for the deliberation of ‘place’ as a key representational protagonist.
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Notes
- 1.
RTP from now onwards.
- 2.
A French-Italian co-production, Le fate ignoranti [The Ignorant Fairies] sees Antonia discovering that her dead husband, Massimo, had a male lover, Michele, who forms part of a wider circle of unconventional friends, described as an alternative ‘“queer” family’ (Rigoletto 2010, p. 204).
- 3.
Other key fictional films that arrived were as follows: Benzina (2001); Giorni (2001); Il più bel giorno della mia vita (2002); Il vento, di sera (2003) (ibid.).
- 4.
My translation—unless otherwise acknowledged, please assume that all translations into English are mine.
- 5.
Gary P. Cestaro emphasizes in Queer Italia how World Gay Pride in Rome in the year 2000 was an ‘important turning point in the history of the Italian gay rights movement that for the first time garnered serious national—indeed international—attention’ (2004, p. 1). Mudu adds context to this by explaining that: ‘[t]he [Christian] jubilee marked the climax of a very long papacy devoted to the stout defence of strictly conservative stances in matters of family, sexuality, gender differences, the ordaining of women, etc.’ (2002, p. 195). As a result of the staging of the Pride event at a crucial point in the Catholic Church’s history, a series of ‘turf wars’ ensued in society and the media. The outcome of the whole saga was the challenging of the homogeneity of Rome/Italy through the greater unity seen in the gay and lesbian community and the bringing to the fore of ongoing inequalities in Italian society (ibid., p. 189).
- 6.
Tuttinpiazza (1997)—fourth, and final, part in a series covering aspects of the LGBT movement in Italy between 1994 and 1997 (cinemagay.it); Nessuno Uguale (1998)—produced by AGEDO (Associazione Genitori di Omosessuale/association for parents of homosexuals), this film allows adolescents, gay and straight, to speak of the issue of homosexuality. A later film, Due Volte Genitori (2008), again produced by AGEDO, adopts the parent’s position.
- 7.
- 8.
The ‘anti-globalization film’ focuses on the local and often devastating impact of decisions by companies to close factories and/or to re-locate production elsewhere, for example, whereas the ‘counter-globalization film’ seeks to unearth both the dispersed strategies of companies in maintaining power and control, and the opposition that may be taking place against these (O’Shaughnessy 2007, p. 170).
- 9.
The following festivals in France, as of end of 2017: Chéries–Chéris, Festival du film lesbien, gay, bi, trans, queer et ++++ de Paris https://cheries-cheris.com/ (23rd progamme); Festival Écrans Mixtes, Lyon http://festival-em.org/ (8th programme); In&Out, Nice http://www.lesouvreurs.com/inoutfestival2017/ (9th programme); Vues d’en face: festival international de Grenoble http://www.vuesdenface.com/web/ (17th programme); D’un Bord à l’Autre: Festival de films LGBT, Orléans http://www.festivaldunbordalautre.com/ (8th programme); Paris International Lesbian and Feminist Film Festival https://www.cineffable.fr/en/editoEn.htm (8th programme); FACE à FACE Festival du film gay et lesbien de Saint-Etienne http://www.festivalfaceaface.fr/ (13th programme).
The following festivals in Italy, as of end of 2017: Sicilia Queer FilmFest http://www.siciliaqueerfilmfest.it/sqff/ (3rd programme); Lovers Film Festival, Turin http://www.loversff.com/servizio/News/32°-Lovers-Film-Festival:-nuovo-nome-e-novita/ca_23884.html (32nd programme); Festival Mix Milano di Cinema Gaylesbico e Queer Culture http://www.festivalmixmilano.com/ (31st programme); Some Prefer Cake: Bologna Lesbian Film Festival http://someprefercakefestival.com/ (9th progamme); Gender Bender Festival Internazionale, Bologna http://www.genderbender.it/en/ (15th programme); Sardinia Queer Short Film Festival http://www.usnexpo.it/ (16th progamme); Omovies, Festival di Cinema Omosessuale , Transgender e Questioning, Napoli http://www.omovies.it/ (10th programme); Divergenti – Festival Internazionale di Cinema Trans, Bologna https://www.facebook.com/mit.italia/ (9th programme). Sites accessed 31 December 2017.
- 10.
In the European context, the term ‘queer’ is considered in more subtle ways (O’Rourke 2011, p. xv).
- 11.
Bois from now onwards.
- 12.
The ‘théatrophone’ [theatre phone] was introduced at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Invented by Clément Ader, it allowed listeners to hear contemporaneous theatre productions via the telephone.
- 13.
Goodkin (1987, p. 1171) refers to links with Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion and Galatea, Tristan and Isolde, Adam and Lilith, and Faust.
- 14.
In mapping out the history of cinema in his own mesmerizing way, Godard questions the very notion of ‘history’ (Neer 2007, pp. 135–136). This video essay film, which is shaped by way of a mélange of sourced images, words, and sounds, is divided into eight parts and deals with issues such as the politics of film, genocide, globalization, Europe, art, sexuality, and religion (ibid.).
- 15.
These priorities were shaped by those who were perceived by the authorities as a threat to modernity’s progress, falling into what Ashley broadly categorizes in her research as mental and social ‘misfits’—the latter of which is of particular interest to this study as it includes ‘sexual deviants’ (i.e. ‘inverts’ and ‘pederasts’). Ashley’s contemporary re-evaluation of the period through the term ‘misfit’ articulates how those demonstrating what were deemed aberrant behaviours were not entirely excluded from society, as might be expected when considered retrospectively from a supposedly more informed position today, but were both inside and outside it (i.e. amiss/fitting) in a way that proved useful in the development of society. What this allowed was the benchmarking of what was ‘normal’ and the identification and treatment of who or what was considered out of sync. On this, there is a significant amount of evidence demonstrating how professional bodies in France and Italy had a continued dialogue with each other concerning the appropriate identification and management of these apparent ‘misfits’ (Ashley 2017).
- 16.
Luca Malici explains that Italians tend to prefer identity categories such as ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’, and that academic interest in queer theory has only recently started to develop due to limited translations of works from elsewhere. He also explains that ‘queer’ is not understood as a re-appropriated word used for combative purposes as it is in the United Kingdom and the United States (2011, pp. 114–115). Other works have contended with similar concerns. In Gay Signatures: Gay and Lesbian Theory, Fiction and Film in France, 1945–1995, Heathcote et al. offer a queer reading of contemporary gay and lesbian cultural output based on an analysis of the relationship between the respective French and North American contexts (i.e. between an Anglo-American queer perspective and a French ‘pudeur’ [discretion]), suggesting that this approach gives a sense of balance to the French debate concerning gay identities (while at the same time overcoming the all-too-common problem of inappropriately analysing a culture different to one’s own from the position of an Anglo-American queer theoretical perspective) (1998, pp. 7–8, 20–21). In Queer French, Globalization, Language, and Sexual Citizenship in France, Denis M. Provencher proposes that through an ‘American-style’ globalization, a new French gay culture has been encouraged to queer up on both a national and global level (2007, pp. 3–11). In Queer Italia, editor Gary P. Cestaro highlights how the analysis of a variety of texts from different periods points to a collapse in ‘fixed definitions of sexual identity’ (2004, p. 2).
- 17.
This film is set in a school in rural Auvergne, where all the children are taught in a single classroom by one teacher, George Lopez (Dawson 2003).
- 18.
de Lauretis introduced ‘queer theory’ in 1991. This was for a special edition entitled ‘Queer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities’ for Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. Guided by no one specific theoretical framework, ‘queer theory’ was a response both to the marginalization of non-normative genders and sexualities, and to the widening of a politics of identity (Hennessy 1993, pp. 964–965). Queer theory sought, instead, to challenge fixed and stable categories of identity, and to undo the power relations that sustained these (ibid.). It was also intended as a move away from gay and lesbian studies, which meant that the normalization of queer identities that repeated the inclusivity of earlier decades (i.e. as epitomized through the homophile movement) was challenged through the re-appropriation of various positions that sought to point out its inevitable fallibility (Sullivan 2003, p. 48).
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Brett, O. (2018). Contemporary Queer Cinema in France and Italy: Undoing ‘Place’. In: Performing Place in French and Italian Queer Documentary Film. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96701-1_1
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