This is an interesting collection of gay short films. My favorite among them is Anthem, a poetry/dance/music short on the theme of gay African Americans. My least favourite was Billy Turner's Secret, mostly due to a badly-directed fight scene.
There's a reason this is called "The New Queer Cinema". There aren't a lot of gay short films from the 20th century, relative to what we're now getting in the 21st. Also, rather than a single feature-length film, an anthology of shorts like this is the best way to get impressions of what gay life was like, in this case in the early 1990s.
Here we have very honest and effective representations of issues around HIV/AIDS, gay bashing, sexual and racial identity, and reflections on a lost era. Had the execution been better, most of these would be excellent. As it is, they are still good, and historically significant.
There's a reason this is called "The New Queer Cinema". There aren't a lot of gay short films from the 20th century, relative to what we're now getting in the 21st. Also, rather than a single feature-length film, an anthology of shorts like this is the best way to get impressions of what gay life was like, in this case in the early 1990s.
Here we have very honest and effective representations of issues around HIV/AIDS, gay bashing, sexual and racial identity, and reflections on a lost era. Had the execution been better, most of these would be excellent. As it is, they are still good, and historically significant.
