A Few Notes On LGBTQ Filmmaking
(Note: I wrote this article partially as a response to re-watching the 2008 video of Ilene Chaiken speaking about The L Word and the lack of LGBTQ representation on TV still after her show’s last season would air in 2009.
And this lack of representation on TV and Film is prevalent even today in 2017. This recent article from Teen Vogue magazine sums it up really well; ‘LGBTQ Women in Pop Culture: Here’s What Needs to Change.’
And this one, from Vanity Fair, ‘Even in a Post-Moonlight World, It’s Nearly Impossible to Get a Gay Movie Made.’
Also, I hadn’t wanted to address the practice of cisgender and heterosexual actors taking roles that should really go to LGBTQ actors in my piece, because truthfully I am still attached to many films which feature heterosexual, heteronormative people playing LGBTQ characters exactly. And so I didn’t want to sound hypocritical and feel simply inadequate to write an articulate and fully formed opinion about this issue still.
And then by sheer luck this article by Jen Richards just came out and found its’ way to my Facebook newsfeed. She has exactly the right, articulate and fully formed opinion about this practice, and so please do read her article ‘Matt Bomer Playing A Trans Woman Is More Than Problematic — It’s Dangerous.’)
A FEW NOTES ON LGBTQ FILMMAKING
I absolutely love LGBTQ film organizations like Outfest, because I love LGBTQ community and filmmaking. I love watching LGBTQ films, narrative features, documentaries, shorts and everything else, I love Q&A’s, panel discussions and receptions, and I love after-parties and free vodka, wine and beer. And I love year round screenings, especially from the UCLA Film Archives, and Outfest Fusion and workshops.
But I think there should be LGBTQ Filmmaking Seminars and Workshops all year around, and Case Studies and Monthly Membership Meetings, at the Outfest home office for instance, much like Film Independent does, (and to some extent the International Documentary Association.).
And these Seminars, etc. should be conducted by established LGBTQ film talent, for aspiring and establishing LGBTQ talent. These Seminars and Workshops should be tailored around LGBTQ specific issues, like LGBTQ storytelling, audiences, funding, festival circuits and distribution, etc.
And the Case Studies should be of LGBTQ films, focussing on storytelling and techniques, and budgets and funding, and festival circuits and distribution, and audiences and profits, etc.
And the Monthly Membership Meetings should be focussed on promoting film organization membership and LGBTQ community building and networking amongst members.
And the idea of having more LGBTQ film critics and Queer Female-centered film critics should be nurtured.
And having more actual LGBTQ film organizations in Los Angeles, like Outfest, wouldn’t hurt neither.
If you want more and better quality LGBTQ films, the LGBTQ community itself needs to invest in its’ own filmmaking talent!
Just A Few More Thoughts.
I think it’s wonderful when films made by minorities do really well at the box office and are aimed at a wide audience, like the woman-directed and woman-led ‘Wonder Woman,’ but I think that it’s both smart and economically to to the advantage of LGBTQ minorities specifically to focus on primarily smaller films, especially since there are distribution platforms like Netflix and Amazon in place to support those.
Women are minorities because not treated equal under the law and in society, but are not a minority in numbers, and this affects ticket sales a great deal, compared to LGBTQ people, who are both treated unequal under the law and in society, and are smaller in numbers, so make up for a smaller, paying audience. This is the main difference between the two groups.
I also think LGBTQ documentaries have for a long time now been really strong but I think narrative feature films generally speaking could do a lot better still. I honestly don’t understand why so many of them are made in a quirky and comedic vein, given that we still have quite a long way to go towards full LGBTQ equality in the US and worldwide.
I realize we all want to see some positive representations but comedies generally speaking don’t fulfill that goal, and films should instead be meaningful, and so often on a more serious note, in order to be life affirming exactly. (And nobody does quirky comedy better than Ellen DeGeneres anyway.)
We need more LGBTQ films with serious impact, more narrative films like Dee Rees’ ‘Pariah,’ Todd Haynes’ ‘Carol,’ Maryam Keshavarz’s ‘Circumstance,’ Gus Van Sant’s ‘Milk,’ Kimberly Peirce’s ‘Boys Don’t Cry,’ Lisa Cholodenko’s ‘High Art,’ Mary Harron’s ‘I Shot Andy Warhol,’ Patty Jenkins’ ‘Monster,’ Sydney Freeland’s ‘Drunktown’s Finest,’ Jenni Olson’s ‘The Royal Road,’ Aurora Guerrero’s ‘Mosquita Y Mari,’ Stephen Daldry’s ‘The Hours,’ Andrew Ahn’s ‘Spa Night,’ Barry Jenkins’ ‘Moonlight,’ and Ang Lee’s ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ and even such classics as Jonathan Demme’s ‘Philadelphia,’ Sidney Lumet’s ‘Dog Day Afternoon,’ Mike Nichols’ ‘Silkwood,’ John Schlesinger’s ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and Robert Altman’s ‘Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,’ to name a few.
We should also find a way to make these smaller and serious films seem more connected somehow, as if belonging to a movement, since single films kind of come and go, but film movements seem to stick in people’s minds.
I know movements are usually named after the fact, but there are exceptions, like Dogma 95 for instance, held together by a manifesto, and I really think that wouldn’t hurt the marketing aspect of minority-made films. Maybe we just need another ‘New Queer Cinema’ of sorts.
And this is not a manifesto of any kind but just some filmmaking suggestions.
Regarding “Single Takes” Vs. “Over The Shoulder Shots,” (or a combination thereof,) it is preferable to shoot with two cameras, but carefully not getting in each other’s shots, like John Cassavetes did on his 1968 ‘Faces.’ One main camera, the A-camera, and one to shoot the “emotional accents,” the B-camera, which is the one Cassavetes himself held.
Now John Cassavetes wasn’t gay and some of his best films starred his talented wife, the actress Gena Rowlands, but he was as interested in human insecurity and secrecy as anyone could possibly could be, and all of his films are prime examples of emotional depth and used relatively simple filmmaking techniques to achieve that exactly.
For the Single Take tactic to really work, plenty of rehearsal would be required, instead of a lot of technical set ups, but less actual footage would be shot, and which also means less footage would be have to be edited. More “General Lighting” is also made possible through this, as opposed to lighting for each separate shot, as well as a lot of “Single Location” scenes, preferably indoors, like Cassavetes did for his 1974 ‘A Woman Under The Influence.’
“Show, Don’t Tell,” is one of the main filmmaking rules, yet some of the greatest films, including this year’s Best Picture at the Oscars, Barry Jenkins’ ‘Moonlight’ are very telling indeed, and the story’s structure unfolds in such a way, (three large chunks in which three different actors play the same main character at three different stages in his life,) that it feels as if whole parts of the story are missing, and certainly not shown. This leaves a lot to the imagination of the audience, and makes “the big reveal” in the end all the more intense. And the big reveal itself is also told, and not shown.
Because the very nature of LGBTQ issues unfortunately often deals with secrecy and holding back, and quiet intensity and longing not acted on, subtler, quieter and lengthier scenes actually lend themselves perfectly to convey these specific issues. Some of the absolute best scenes in a lot of LGBTQ classics are actually verbal exchanges between characters.
Another issue which is rather specific in LGBTQ related subjects is behavior of an LGBTQ character, as well as solitude, which cinematically also lends itself to quiet, longer, single takes.
So whereas LGBTQ related issues in reality unfortunately still deal with a lot of invisibility, oppression and alienation, and LGBTQ people are realistically a minority, not just under the law but also in numbers, these very specific real life problems happen to lend themselves perfectly to certain very cost-cutting cinematic tactics. This should be consciously taken advantage of in LGBTQ filmmaking.
BTW, this goes for female-oriented films in general as well. Because women, generally speaking anyway, are known to have better communicational skills than men, this can easily be translated into “talkier” films, requiring less actual action. When done right, this is not at all boring, but certainly cost-cutting and so very effective. This doesn’t mean women cannot star in action-packed films of course, but I think the very reason fewer films are made possible is exactly because of the costly nature of filmmaking. So cutting costs all around, ups the actual production of films.
And because there are so many alternatives these days to what used to be the only desired way to be distributed and exhibited, theatrical release, this cost-cutting of film productions only makes sense. Alternative platforms such as Netflix and Amazon streaming, as well as limited theatrical releases and special screenings, etc., lend themselves perfectly to smaller, lower budget films exactly.
On a final note, if art, which is by nature idealistic, does not correspond to one’s sense of reality at all anymore, one can not relate to it. What’s worse, one becomes desensitized to reality, to truthfulness moreover, and the art itself, as well as one’s reaction to it, becomes delusional, which is actually dangerous. When art is no longer an inquiry into the true nature of things, of people, of our human condition, and is pure escapism, for escapism’s sake, we lose touch with reality and our purpose in life, which is to interpret reality so we can somehow live in it.
A good example is the current state of the US altogether. The US’ recent presidential election has shown us pretty clearly what happens when the rather elitist and liberal few, mostly on the West and East Coasts, have no sense of the reality of all others living in the rest of the US anymore. And now we are left to deal with the wreckage, and many of us feel overwhelmed and unprepared.
This is exactly what happens when we have been fed too many lies through entertainment, and the news itself has become a form of entertainment, and so biased.
We, as a whole, as a population, have lost our critical thinking skills and our desire to even think things through. We have been fed sarcasm, shock value, and real time “news,” on such a continuous basis, we cannot sit still, quiet our brains and our feelings, and understand life on a deeper level anymore. As a result we feel we need to log off from our electronic devices, unplug our entertainment and go back to nature for periods of time, in order to detox from all the delusional noise.
Art is supposed to do the opposite of this, it is supposed to bring us closer to ourselves and each other, to understand our universal dilemmas and our deepest insecurities, and to provide us some objective, universally understood knowledge and from that knowledge a sense of peace. Art should feel truthful, urgent and highly necessary, not mind numbing and desensitizing.
I am for a filmmaking art that fulfills this purpose.
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My name is Gabriella Bregman, I am a Hollywood-based Writer, Filmmaker and Producer, currently in production of a Feature Documentary about LGBTQ US-Immigration Exclusion-Policy, including my personal story of US immigration discrimination during DOMA, (Defense Of Marriage Act, of 1996–2015,) titled ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights,’ through my film production company Bregman Films.
The 2001 John Cassavetes Film Retrospective ‘Gena and John: A Cassavetes Retrospective’ at the Laemmle Theatres in Los Angeles is a Bregman Films Production.
I am also the Founder of a Nonprofit Film Organization Queer Female Filmmakers Los Angeles — A Media Site & LA Film Mixers (2018.)
In 2018 I am publishing my story and essays in a book, titled ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights & Other Essays.’
I identify as a Gender Nonconforming Lesbian, “non-op” Trans-Masculine, and Bi-Racial, from the Netherlands, Los Angeles-based.
My pronouns are: they/them/theirs.
Please check out my other articles on LGBTQ- and Immigration Issues, the State of Women and LGBTQ People in Film, and Lesbian/Queer Film as well as Queer Female Sexuality and Gender Identity at medium.com/@gabriellabregman
A few titles:
Resume/FILM BIO: Gabriella Bregman (2018) (2018)
2018 Update on Documentary ‘The Queer Case for Individual Rights’ (2018)
A Note on the State of Women in Film (2016)
A Few Notes On LGBTQ Filmmaking (2017)
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 1 of 5) (2018)
John Cassavetes Film Retrospective (2001) (2018)
On ‘Moonlight’ and the Subject of Positive Representation (2017)
My 2018 Oscar Pick for Best Picture (2018)
In Defense of Rationality (2018)
In Defense of Individual Rights (2018)
A Few Notes on US Immigration Exclusion Policies Towards Women- and LGBTQ Immigrants (2014)
The Root Cause Of Misogyny, And The Necessity Of Free Will (Gender Binary System notes, part 1 of 7) (2016)
The Male And Female Brain, And The “Cause” Of Transgenderism (Gender Binary System notes, part 2 of 7) (2016)
The Gender-Binary System Was Created For Population Control And Slavery, Including Sex Slavery (Gender Binary System notes, part 7 of 7)
All Articles Written by Gabriella Bregman (TM). All Pictures Owned by Gabriella Bregman (TM). All Rights Reserved (2018)
