Last Saturday afternoon Stuart and I went to watch the compilation film
Britain on Film: LGBT Britain at the Barbican Cinema in London's glitzy Barbican
Centre.
Exploring the rich history of LGBT life in the UK in this
special collection of archive films spanned shifting attitudes and the fight
for rights from 1909 to 1994.
Mainly in black and white, this moving and fascinating
collection included some of the earliest known representations of LGBT people
on screen, such as a 1925 film on Cutie Cattaro, a boxer more interested in
flirting than fighting and a drag queen, "Percy" competing for a
beauty prize in 1909. The former looked like a modern skit of machismo in sport
and the latter like a Edwardian Benny Hill sketch. Both genuinely laugh out
loud funny.
The collection of shorts also explored the struggles and
identity politics of the ‘80s and ‘90s, the films covered early AIDS victims
recounting their painful experiences; the formation of the Gay Black Group, an
early instance of intersectional thinking; and the 1980 fight for transgender
rights in the European Court.
Looking into both the political and the personal, the
programme of short films, documentaries and newsreels depicted the collective
public fight for basic rights and equality and more intimate and psychological
ones: the shedding of shame and the ability to be open about one’s most private
self and claiming of the right to love.
The most moving part for me was the interview in mid-1960s
of the mother. The interviewer was asking the old dear what was her reaction to
her daughter coming out to her as lesbian. Expecting a standard respond of
"it's disgusting/our daughter means nothing to us now" the lady said,
"Well, we were shocked at first. But we felt sorry for her. Not sorry that
she was a lesbian. No, no, we were sorry that she must have struggled with the
secret before telling us. That must have been so hard for her to keep that
secret. It was a very brave thing for her to do and must have taken a lot of
courage on her part. It cannot have been easy for her to trust us with that
information. She did not know how we were going to react. But we love our
daughter and I just hope that as the months go by she feels that her trust in
us has been well placed." Not the reaction the interviewer had expected!
If you get a chance to see it.. do. It's great.
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