'There never have been lesbians or gay men in Hollywood films.  Only homosexuals.' 1

For the majority of the last century, lesbians and gay men were hard to find on the silver screen.  This was largely due to the introduction of the Production Code, at the insistence of the Legion of Decency, a group run by the Catholic Church, who already had a ratings system of their own for Hollywood films.  An 'A' meant that a movie was acceptable; a 'B' meant that it contained material that was morally objectionable.  A film given a rating of 'C' was condemned.  In order to avoid the massive boycotts the Legion threatened, Hollywood agreed to introduce a code of their own to weed out potentially objectionable material from future films.  In 1934 the Production Code Administration was officially set up, overseen by Joseph Breen.  The code advised against the portrayal of a wide range of material, including open-mouthed kissing, lustful embraces and white slavery.  According to David M. Lugowski in his article 'Queering the (New) Deal', most of the language of the code was advisory, but on the matter of homosexuality it was very clear.  'Clause six of section two on "Sex" states that "sex perversion or any inference to it is forbidden." 2

The code didn't make lesbians and gay men disappear completely from the cinema.  Those lesbians the code didn't manage to sanitise, Hollywood 'satanized'.  Lesbians during this time were portrayed as deeply disturbed individuals, like Mrs Danvers in Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), or as vampires, murderers and women behind bars.  They were a cautionary tale, an example for women of what not to become.

Even after the Production Code, gay and lesbian characters were rarely portrayed in a positive way.  According to Vito Russo, who made a detailed study of gay and lesbian representation in the cinema in his book The Celluloid Closet, '[i]n twenty-two of twenty-eight films dealing with gay subjects from 1962 to 1978, major gay characters on screen ended in suicide or death.' 3 These characters were outsiders - victims or victimisers.  Even when lesbian characters were shown in a more positive light in later films, such as Dolly Pelliker, played by Cher in Silkwood (Mike Nichols, 1983), lesbians were solitary figures - supported or tolerated by a small group of heterosexual friends, but with no lesbian community in sight.  Alternately, films explored the sexual awakening of a woman, only to take it back in the later half of the film by having her convert to heterosexuality, such as in Personal Best (Robert Towne, 1982).  According to James Robert Parish in his book Gays and Lesbians in Mainstream Cinema, Personal Best was 'a cop-out on so many levels' not least because it portrayed 'the lesbian woman lead character go straight after having a cure-all heterosexual romance.'4 During this time, it was clear that Hollywood had nothing new to offer lesbian and gay audiences.

It was not until the post-Stonewall period that lesbian and gay visibility in cinema began to change for the better.  With increased political activism and money within the gay community, gay filmmakers began to put their own visions on screen.  Initially this was in the form of shorts and extremely low budget 'underground' films which Jose Arroyo talks about in his article on gay and lesbian film.  'The 'underground', with its onus on innovation in form or subject matter, its insistence on personal expression, and its championing of the transgressive, provided a fertile context for lesbian and gay representations'. 5  These films gave a voice to the gay community, but were rarely, if ever, seen by a mainstream audience and could not be considered commercial.

However, in 1992 things would seem to have turned around for gay and lesbian cinema.  The high profile presence of gay films at the Sundance Film Festival, as well as at Toronto and Amsterdam, led to B. Ruby Rich's article, originally published in the Village Voice, heralding the arrival of a 'New Queer Cinema'.  In the article, Rich declared that '[a]nyone who has been following the news at film festivals over the past few months knows, by now, that 1992 has become a watershed year for independent gay and lesbian film and video.' 6  This would seem to be an encouraging step forward for independent gay and lesbian film.  Finally queer filmmakers were receiving critical and industry attention.  Films such as Poison (Todd Haynes, 1991) were winning awards and being picked up for distribution.  Most of all, a diverse range of characters, rather than the narrow stereotypes provided by the mainstream in the past, were being shown on screen.  It is this diversity that critics argue is a predominant feature of New Queer Cinema.  According to Chris Jones, 'The key idea behind the New Queer Cinema is diversity: a range of homosexualities manifested through a variety of character, situation, race, gender, sexual practice and film language.' 7   

However, it would appear that this diversity does not fully extend to the lesbian community, or indeed to lesbian filmmakers.  In her article, Rich concentrates on the men - Derek Jarman (Edward II, 1991), Todd Haynes (Poison, 1991) and Tom Kalin (Swoon, 1991).  Despite the fact that Rich claims 1992 is a turning point for both gay and lesbian film, no lesbian films were shown at Sundance that year.  Rich, however does not focus on the reason for this.  While gay filmmakers receive some funding for features, there would seem to be no perceived market for lesbian films, and so they receive no such funding.  Lesbians are therefore often restricted to making shorts and videos.  And as Rich points out, videos are rarely shown at festivals: 'Sundance, like most film festivals, showed none.' 8  As a result, lesbian films are not given the industry attention that gay films receive, and are rarely picked up for distribution.  'All the new movies being snatched up by distributors, shown in mainstream festivals, booked into theatres, are by the boys.  Surprise, the amazing new lesbian videos that are redefining the whole dyke relationship to popular culture remain hard to find.' 9  It would appear that in 'New Queer Cinema', one form of marginalization has been replaced with another.  

Due to the lack of exposure given to lesbian cinema, many critics have argued that Rich's 'New Queer Cinema'  is nothing more than a new term for cinema by gay men, as it all but ignores the work being done by lesbian filmmakers.  Filmmaker Greta Schiller, who was interviewed in Tamsin Wilton's book Immortal, Invisible: Lesbians and the moving image, argued that:

'The article by B. Ruby Rich that gave birth to the label was only about the boys.  ... I think Ruby did a big disservice to lesbian film-makers by writing that article and not mentioning the lesbian film-makers that do exist or why lesbian features seldom get made.  It isn't just because lesbians don't want to make features, it's because lesbians are women and gay men are men.' 10 

To be fair to Rich, she does acknowledge the inequality between lesbian and gay filmmakers in her article.  She comments that at the Toronto Film Festival, 'both low-budget and high-end film-making showed up...  Not surprisingly, the guys were high end, the gals low.' 11  However, those lesbian filmmakers she does mention she quickly dismisses from the 'New Queer' label.  She describes the reaction to Su Friedrich's film First Comes Love (1992) as being greeted with 'catcalls from its largely queer audience' and questions whether this was as a result of the film's subject matter, avant-garde style or the filmmaker's gender. 12  Rich then goes on to dismiss filmmaker Monika Treut as 'post-queer'.  The only lesbian filmmaker who receives positive attention from Rich is Sadie Benning, who's video Jollies (1990) was shown at a conference on Queer Cinema that ran during Sundance.  However, because it was a video it was not shown at the main festival, and so received no industry attention, despite the fact that it 'brought down the house' 13 at the conference.

Much debate surrounds 'New Queer Cinema', even questioning whether it exists at all and if so, how much relevance it has for lesbians.  In response to Rich's 'New Queer Cinema', queer critic and filmmaker Cherry Smyth questions whether lesbians have a place within the new aesthetic at all.  She states that, 'despite the growing number of talented lesbian film-makers, there is little evidence of a new queer dyke cinema.'  She goes as far as to say, 'in the New Queer Wave, lesbians are drowning.' 14  Given the attention given to gay directors, to the exclusion of lesbians, she may not be far wrong.

In his examination of 'New Queer Cinema', Jose Arroyo, like Rich, concentrates only on gay filmmakers, and in his opinion, the new aesthetic in gay cinema has sprung out of the community's battle with AIDS.  'AIDS is why there is New Queer Cinema and it is what New Queer Cinema is all about.' 15  While AIDS is not exclusively a gay issue, it has effected the gay community considerably more than the lesbian community, and therefore its prevalence within the definition of 'New Queer' would seem to exclude lesbian cinema to a certain extent.  
 
In 1994, a conference was held in London, titled 'We are here but are we queer?: Lesbian filmmaking versus Queer Cinema'.  At the conference, the filmmakers and critics present debated whether the term 'New Queer Cinema' held any relevance for lesbian filmmakers or audiences.  In response to what was said, Penny Florence comments that 'it did not convince me that 'queer' cinema, if it exists at all, has anything really new to offer lesbians and women in general.' 16  Given this response to New Queer Cinema, and the lack of a lesbian presence within it, it is difficult to see 1992 as any sort of turning point in terms of independent lesbian cinema.

B. Ruby Rich ended her 1992 article with the following statement: 'The Queer New Wave has come full circle: the boys and their films have arrived. ... But will lesbians ever get the attention for their work that men get for theirs?' 17  Two years after the questionable beginning of New Queer Cinema, Rich may have got her answer when a film was released that began to change the face of lesbian cinema - raising its profile and proving that there was indeed a market for lesbian films.  Go Fish (Rose Troche, 1994) not only made history by being the first film to ever be picked up by a distributor during the first weekend of the Sundance Film Festival, but its consequent success paved the way for other independent lesbian films coming after it.  However, while Go Fish may have been seen by many as the beginning of the lesbian wave of 'New Queer Cinema', its co-writer and star, Guinevere Turner, has distanced herself from the term, calling into question its relevance to lesbian filmmakers.  In the introduction to the film's published script she commented, '"New Queer Cinema" had allegedly been born.  (Apparently, it was a boy.)' 18

The idea for this thesis began several years ago with a documentary.  Emma Hindley's Zero Budget (1996) was aired on the UK's Channel 4 during Queer Street, a weekend of programming devoted to gay and lesbian issues.  Before watching this short film, the concept of a lesbian film, for me, went no further than brief images, usually negative, in films like Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1991).  However listening to these openly lesbian filmmakers talk about their work, and seeing the clips of their films made me begin to ask questions.  Were these the only films out there?  How available were these films?  Was there, in fact, an independent lesbian film industry, and if so, what did these films have to say?

With this documentary as my starting point, I looked at the films that it had concentrated on - Go Fish, All Over Me (Alex Sichel, 1996) and Everything Relative (Sharon Pollack, 1996).  In my reading I cast a wide net, looking at anything on the subject of lesbians in the cinema.  Much of this work was on earlier films, when lesbians were represented in less than positive ways, and the majority of the films were directed by men.  I therefore began to look mainly at recent books and journal articles that had begun to examine recent films such as Go Fish.  In order to find out how recent lesbian films were received by lesbian audiences and critics, I looked at magazines such as Diva, as well as the internet site PopcornQ, an online magazine devoted to gay and lesbian cinema.

The films I chose to concentrate on in this thesis were picked because I see them as part of a movement which occurred in America in the mid to late 1990s.  I would argue that Go Fish was the most significant of these films, as it established the existence of a lesbian market, as well as breaking the mould of what constituted lesbian representation in cinema.  The films that followed - All Over Me, Everything Relative, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (Maria Maggenti, 1995) and High Art (Lisa  Cholodenko, 1998) - each in their way contributed to this movement, by either attempting to emulate Go Fish's representation of a lesbian community, or by attempting to break the mould of representation in their own way.  Significantly, all the above films were produced by either Christine Vachon or Dolly Hall, with the exception of Everything Relative (which was produced by the director/writer Sharon Pollack).  Vachon and Hall are considered to be two of the leading names in American independent cinema.

While the films named above were easily obtainable on video, other lesbian films were not.  More alternative and avant-garde work by lesbian filmmakers such as Barbara Hammer, Jan Oxenberg, Monika Treut, Su Friedrich and Sheila McLaughlin have not received wide spread distribution, particularly in the UK and Ireland.  Unfortunately, in order to examine these films, I had to rely solely on journal articles and interviews with these filmmakers. 

Before progressing further, it is important to define what exactly is meant by the term 'lesbian film'.  This has been used in the past to describe anything from independent, experimental shorts to Hollywood produced films featuring lesbian characters.  In her article, 'Theorising Mainstream Female Spectatorship: The case of the Popular Lesbian Film', Karen Hollinger argues that 'popular lesbian cinema' can be divided into various categories, such as 'ambiguous lesbian films, openly lesbian films, Hollywood productions, independent features, coming out narratives, lesbian romance films, and celebrations of lesbian community.' 19  Given this array of categories, the definition of 'lesbian film' can become murky and difficult to pin down.  For the purposes of this thesis, 'lesbian cinema' will be defined as those films (whether they be avant-garde, or linear in style) made by openly lesbian directors, with a lesbian agenda or subject matter, and made with a lesbian audience in mind, irrespective of whether that film may have cross-over appeal to a mainstream audience.  Those films containing lesbian subjects, but directed by men, either within the Hollywood system, or independently, do not belong within this definition, and will be discussed as male/heterosexual representations of lesbianism. 

In this thesis, I propose to look at American Independent Lesbian film, and answer the following questions.  Was Go Fish a significant turning point for lesbian cinema, in establishing a viable market and creating a space in which the lesbian community could be reflected in a way not previously seen?  Did lesbian films made after Go Fish succeed in creating a diverse and recognisable representation of the lesbian community on the screen, and in doing so how did they deal with the issue of positive and negative representations of that community.  Finally, how do lesbian filmmakers deal with the issue of the gaze in these films, and can it be mediated to become that of a lesbian gaze?

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