cinema, culture, drama, film, film history, history, film studies, film theory, pop culture, gay, lesbian, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, homosexuality, movies, non-fiction, queer cinema, queer studies

There have been hundreds of films with homosexual characters, many revealing hemophobic prejudices. Yet while hundreds of lesbians and gay men have worked before and behind the camera, relatively few films have been made by lesbians and gay men that actually explore the problems, pressures, and pleasures of lesbian and gay life. Now You See It is about some of them. In part it provides a record of these films up to 1980, putting familiar titles such as Girls in Uniform, Un chant d'amour and Word Is Out in their lesbian/gay context and bringing to light many other forgotten but remarkable films. Each film discussed is categorised and each type is examined in detail in relation to both film tradition and the sexual sub-cultures within which they were made. There is more at stake, however, than simply uncovering and re-evaluating what has been hidden from history - Now You See It is also a case study in the dynamincs of lesbian/gay cultural production. These films were formed from the filmic and sub-cultural images, assumptions, styles, and feelings available to them, which both made the films possible and also defined and delimited the forms they could take and what they could say. Such processes of formation and deformation characterise all cultural production, but they carry a special charge for lesbians and gay men seeking both to break free from and be heard in the languages of a homophobic society.