On the Emergence and Cultural Politics of Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals

Furtive, Steady Glances: On the Emergence and Cultural Politics of Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals Gerald J. Z. Zielinski Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University, Montréal August 2008 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Ph.D. © Gerald J. Z. Zielinski, 2008 iii ABSTRAIT Cette thèse décrit l'émergence des festivals du cinéma lesbien et gai aux États- Unis et au Canada, leurs significations et leurs dimensions politiques, à travers les contextes discursifs particuliers dans lesquels les festivals sont intégrés. Je propose que, si les festivals internationaux à caractère général opèrent dans des réseaux très bien définis, dans le cas des festivals organisés sur la base des catégories de sexualités minoritaires et de leurs communautés, la relation des films projetés au festival, les films du festival et aux spectateurs et aux spectatrices, et le festival à n'importe quel réseau de distribution de films, changent fondamentalement. Le but de la thèse est alors d'explorer ces changements et ces différences à travers une analyse comparative de certains festivals de cinéma organisés autour de catégories d'identités sexuelles minoritaires. Je propose que les festivals du cinéma gai et lesbien offrent un ensemble unique d'histoires et de structures qui diffèrent fondamentalement de celles des grands festivals de film internationaux. Les cas principaux étudiés ici sont des festivals à Montréal, New York, San Francisco et Toronto. ABSTRACT This dissertation charts the emergence of lesbian and gay film festivals in the United States and Canada, their meanings and politics, through the specific discursive contexts in which the festivals are embedded. I argue that while general international film festivals operate within a very well defined network, the added categories of minority sexuality and community crucially and fundamentally change the relationship of the films screened to the festival, films and festival to audience, and the festival to any network of distribution. The aim is then to explore those changes and differences through a comparative analysis of selected film festivals organized around categories of minority sexual identities. I argue that the lesbian and gay film festival poses a unique set of histories and structures that differ significantly from the general international film festival. The main case studies include festivals in Montreal, New York City, San Francisco and Toronto. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my dissertation committee members, Professors Jennifer Burman, Thomas Waugh, Carrie Rentschler, Johanne Sloan and William Straw, I owe much. I thank them for their critical insight into the project. The conversations probed, provoked and prompted my thoughts in new exciting directions. Particularly, I must thank my supervisor Professor Will Straw for his undying patience, incredible generosity and constructive criticism regarding the development of the project. His incisive wit and infectious enthusiasm were especially appreciated along the way. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to meet, discuss and even collaborate with scholars who share a research interest in this growing field of study, whom I wish to thank for their spirited support, namely Dr. Patricia White for various discussions, both Dr. Roger Hallas and Dr. Haidee Wasson in the very early stages, Dr. Ragan Rhyne at the very end, and doctoral candidate Skadi Loist for her persistence. I am certainly looking forward to our potential future projects. Several years ago, I decided to organize a group called the Dissertation Writing Group (DWG) for willing doctoral candidates in related fields. The group has a growing list of successful alumni who have briskly moved on in their careers around the world, including Jason Morgan, Dr. Wade Nelson, Dr. Danielle Schwartz, Dr. Vincent Doyle, among others. I thank them for the intelligent, cordial, critical conversations, which have resonated in each of our dissertations. In the end, of course, I must take full responsibility for any shortcomings in the project as it stands. In Montreal I would not have been able to put this project together without the indefatigable work of the remarkably courteous staff at McGill’s Interlibrary Loans Service, Archives gaies du Québec, Katharine Setzer and Charlie Bourdeau of the Image&Nation Festival, Bibliothèque nationale du Québec, and the médiathèque at the Cinémathèque québécoise. I would also dearly thank the v wonderful staff in the department office, who navigated me through the administrative process smoothly, with a humane touch. On the New York City side of the research, I am happy to thank Chris Berry, Stephen Kent Jusick, Jim Hubbard, as well as the Lesbian Herstory Archives, where the women greeted me graciously and offered tea and cookies, Fales Library at New York University, MIX: The New York Lesbian & Gay Experimental Film/Video Festival, and Basil Tsiokos of the New Festival: New York Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transsexual Film Festival, and the International Gay Information Center (IGIC) at the New York Public Library. Toronto people and organizations that I dearly thank are Richard Fung, John Greyson, James Quandt, Inside/Out Lesbian and Gay Film Festival’s Scott Ferguson and Kathleen Mullen, the Toronto Reference Library, the Film Reference Library of the Cinematheque Ontario and Toronto International Film Festival Group, Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, where the gentlemen volunteers offered wine and cake as part of a surprise birthday party on site. In San Francisco and area, I thank thoroughly filmmaker Mark Huestis, Irina Leimbacher of the San Francisco Cinematheque, Frameline and the San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival’s Michael Lumpkin and Steven Jenkins, the GLBT Historical Society, Pacific Film Archives at the University of California at Berkeley, and special collections of the Hamel Gay Library Center in the San Francisco Public Library. I wish also to thank all those diligent, hard-working people who create and maintain the festivals. Much of their labor is unpaid but crucial to the life that is breathed into the organizations. Without their persistent work and visions life would be that much less joyful. I would like to thank my many students in the four courses that I taught in 2007 and 2008, in which I dared to test out some of my thoughts, namely COMS-490: Queer(ing) the Archive (winter 2007), ENGL-393: Canadian Cinemas & Cities (winter 2007), SDST-250: Introduction to Sexual Diversity Studies (autumn 2007) vi and COMS-250: History of Communication (winter 2008). Their patience was golden. Moreover, I thank Professor Brian Lewis and the rest of the members of Sexual Diversity Studies Minor committee. It was a wonderful delight to have been part of the founding of the minor, and to have been given the opportunity to teach its common course. To be sure, my involvement in the activities of the committee influenced my research project positively. Without funding, the project would never have been completed, so it is with profound gratitude that I acknowledge the following agencies. Upon arrival in my program, I became a doctoral research in the Culture of Cities Project (SSHRC Major Research Grant), under the supervision of Professor Will Straw, with participating researchers in Berlin, Dublin, Montreal and Toronto. Both the financial support and the research project itself helped my own project in its nascent period. The FQRSC (Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture) Doctoral Research Fellowship supported me, and my project, for three crucial years during the research of the project. Furthermore, I am very grateful to have received a SSHRC-McGill Doctoral Research grant earlier in my research, which enabled me to visit archives in New York City, Toronto and San Francisco. While the Beaverbrook Traveling Fellowship Grant brought me to Europe to present at a highly relevant conference, the Beaverbrook Dissertation Completion Fellowship gave me the required incentive to complete my project in a timely manner. I sincerely thank Professors Marc Raboy, Darin Barney and Jonathan Sterne, members of the steering committee for Media@McGill for awarding me the Beaverbrook fellowships, but also for the lively scholarly dynamic that they are contributing to the department. I spent the summer of 2007 as a researcher in residence at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), and am very grateful for being awarding with one of the TD Financial Bank Group-CCA Collection Research Grants. At the CCA, Dr. vii Alexis Sornin, organized a highly intellectually stimulating series of summer of seminars and events, where I also appreciated meeting Professors Beatriz Colomina, David Howes and Constance Classen, among others, whose work I greatly admire. The research stay was very productive and helped me to shape my dissertation. A number of grants allowed me to participate in various conferences over the years, including one from the Centre de recherche sur l’intermédialité (CRI), with which I am affiliated as a doctoral researcher, the special Graduate Student Travel Grant from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS), which brought me to the 2007 SCMS conference in Chicago to present on aspects of my project; and one travel grant from McGill University’s Alma Mater Fund to present on my work at the State University of California at San Francisco. To Jonathon Millard I owe much not only for his belief in me and my project, but most especially

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