Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 1 of 5)
INTRO
To read all 5 parts of the article, click on the links below:
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 1 of 5) INTRO (2018)
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 2 of 5)(2018)
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 3 of 5) LGBTQ FILMS/ INFLUENCES (2018)
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 5 of 5) CONCLUSION (2018)
Or read the article in its’ entirely by clicking on the link below:
Some Thoughts on the State of Lesbian Filmmaking in the US (part 1–5) (2018) (Original Article in its’ Entirety.)
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INTRO
In the 1970s and 80s, growing up in a small town (Voorschoten) not far from Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, there were no lesbian films that I knew of. They simply didn’t exist, at all, that I knew of anyway. My inner reality, my feelings towards women and the idea I had of myself, in terms of my gender identity, had no correlation to the reality around me, to the world of heteronormative, heterosexual, working class people in my neighborhood.
And as a result I lived in a complete fantasy world, as if to unconsciously shield myself from depression somehow, and I was always creative, always inspired. I was always watching films, listening to music, reading, writing, drawing, but nothing I saw truly reflected my inner feelings and fantasy world. I didn’t really consciously know this though, and absorbed films with a passion.
Years later I realized films weren’t only not made for LGBTQ people, but also not told from women’s points of view. This did not bother me as a kid, since I didn’t know what LGBTQ people were and I didn’t feel like a woman myself, but more like a straight guy, and so the films felt as if made for me.
I was inspired by how some actors and musicians and writers acted, what they wore, what they drove, how they lived, what they smoked and drank, what they read and listened to and in turn were inspired by, and chose people like James Dean and Jim Morrison and Jack Kerouac as my role models, not thinking twice these were heterosexual cis-men, (with the exception of James Dean, maybe, as he was allegedly bi-sexual, but I certainly had never heard of “being in the closet,” let alone Hollywood’s “glass closet,”) and certainly not ever thinking people would simply not accept that someone like me could look to them, male artists, for true inspiration.
I had always looked androgynous, was routinely “mistaken” for a guy, was continuously confronted with the invasive question “are you a boy or a girl,” to which my answer today, as a gender nonconforming lesbian, would be “both.” And so it came completely natural to me to emanate my film and music heroes in hairstyles and clothes, etc., and would be extremely offended when people thought I couldn’t have possibly truly liked these people, except for maybe having crushes on them, which I of course did not have at all, or that I would have been influenced by men, “boyfriends,” in my tastes. (My father did initially introduce me to a lot of 70’s classics but I ultimately did my own picking and choosing and we would often differ in tastes, Jack Nicholson was an absolute favorite of his, while Robert De Niro and Al Pacino were favorites of mine.)
But I found all of this “gender role projecting” onto me by society out years later, on a more conscious level that is, and realized that that was what had frustrated me all throughout my youth, not my own perception of myself. It frustrated me because I grew up with these people as role models for as long as I can remember, routinely traveling to Paris to visit Jim Morrison’s grave at Pere Lachaise throughout my youth as if it was the Holy Grail. And so no wonder I had felt very offended when at some point some guy thought I’d gotten into the Doors through a boyfriend, or how else could I have discovered Jim Morrison. I was especially offended as every stranger on the street even took me for a guy, while those in my immediate environment, like this guy I worked with, somehow couldn’t recognize the obvious, that I was a straight guy, and would “therefore” be into Morrison.
Just as I’m still offended today if some guy, and it’s always a guy, projects feminine things onto me, and insists he knows my tastes better than me somehow, and despite the fact I only wear men’s clothes, as I’ve done all my life, and despite my shaved head and despite my muscle car, (which of course must belong to a boyfriend, and when they find out it doesn’t, out come the spits and coughs and homophobic remarks, which I actually prefer.)
This confusion about my gender representation rarely happens anymore, even though some will keep trying, but if I ever suffered from gender dysphoria, this would be how I experience it. I only ever experienced social gender dysphoria, false feminine gender roles projected on to me, (which are of course false for many cis-women as well, as they are socially constructed by men in order to control and own women, women’s minds and bodies that is.)
The absolute worst of gender role projections and expectation from primarily male society comes in the form of expecting me to want to have children, through giving birth specifically of course, and with a man of course. It has absolutely never ever entered my mind to desire these things.
And as a trans-masculine, gender nonconforming lesbian myself I have never experienced body dysphoria, and would personally never resort to medical treatment to transition, but the pressure from society did make me question if I liked my body or not. (Only a female bodied individual is questioned on their body comfort if they choose not to give birth of course, which is pretty strange and off-putting.) Thank goodness I never succumbed to that pressure and was able to figure it all out and love myself for who I am completely. I have only ever experienced a disconnect between my mind and body, and was ultimately able to connect the two, philosophically.
I am in no way invalidating anyone’s experience with dysphoria however and this is my personal experience only. And it also doesn’t mean dysphoria equates the need for transitioning, as some people can just as well transition without experiencing dysphoria. Transgenderism and gender nonconformity have a lot to do with sex hormone distribution, in prenatal development, as I understand it, (from a scientific and non-political point of view,) and is experienced differently from person to person. I just happen to love my body as is, but take issue with the way society perceives me.
In 1991, at 18 years old, and just months away from immigrating to the US to go to Film School in Los Angeles, I saw Philip Kaufman’s ‘Henry and June,’ based on Anais Nin’s journal from 1932, in an art house theater in Leiden upon theatrical release. I guess you could say this was my first lesbian film, (it wasn’t really a lesbian film but lesbianism featured prominently,) and I started defining myself as a lesbian, reconciling that therefore I must be a woman.
(The film was an absolute revelation for me and I became pleasantly hooked on Anais Nin’s journals from thereon, scouring her writings for every lesbian passage that I could find, and of which there weren’t nearly enough. I had never cared for female writers before discovering Nin though. I started keeping a journal myself because of her.)
I much later realized I was not exactly a woman, but am trans-masculine and gender nonconforming, and still a lesbian, as I have no desire to transition whatsoever. I never experienced any real dysphoria, except for socially, since looking very androgynous and constantly being asked what gender or sex I am, but I did experience my mind and body as somehow being disconnected from each other, and myself as disconnected from girls and women around me, as well as from boys and men ultimately.
It felt as if girls and women spoke a different language altogether and I was the only one who couldn’t understand it. It felt as if boys and men did speak my language, but thought I didn’t speak theirs, and so excluded me from conversation.
So really, before 1991 I just never looked for lesbian content in films, and after ‘Henry and June’ I just couldn’t find any more of it and slowly started letting it go and settled for just quality, heteronormative, heterosexual films again. As long as they were well made and had emotional depth I basically was interested. I did start noticing gay male films, which started popping up at regular intervals at the art house theater chain in Los Angeles, when I worked there throughout the 1990s, but really didn’t see any female equivalent, save for one film here and there.
It’s as if lesbians didn’t exist and therefore my feelings for women weren’t real, even if they were the most real thing I’d ever felt in my life, and I was most alive and creative when in love with a woman exactly. As a result I only withdrew into my creative inner world more, and became consistently both more productive and isolated.
When going to Film School from 1992 through 1994 there were simply no words for the kind of films I wanted to make. The term New Queer Cinema had just been coined, in ’92, but I hadn’t heard it quite yet, and even when I did, the focus seemed to be primarily on gay male films.
I did not know that all along what I was meant to make were lesbian films, gender nonconforming films.
I had no idea that was the direction I was supposed to go in when admiring Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, Sidney Lumet, Terrence Malick and John Cassavetes. I just knew I wanted to make independent films, low-budget films, cool, intense films, like ‘Dog Day Afternoon,’ ‘Midnight Cowboy,’ ‘Taxi Driver,’ ‘Badlands.’
A new crop of filmmakers came up in the 1990s and I figured I was supposed to make films like them, like Gus Van Sant, Soderbergh, Linklater, Todd Haynes, Julian Schnabel, and like the new crop of independent films I’d been inspired by, ‘Drugstore Cowboy,’ ‘Sex, Lies and Videotape,’ ‘Basquiat.’
It took me all of my 26 years of working and living in Los Angeles, and at 45 years old, after finding and losing numerous apartments, cars, jobs, cameras, computers and just general belongings, to really fully comprehend I was meant to make lesbian, gender nonconforming, independent films.
And I actually have known all my life I wanted to be a filmmaker, or at least since I was about 12 years old. I never once wavered in my filmmaking goals, despite having been destitute on numerous occasions, even homeless for an extended period of time. I have been motivated and passionate all along, have been producing material all along, am a relatively fast learner, and have been coming up with all kinds of creative ideas from the moment I got off the plane in the summer of 1992, buying my first Super 8 camera and typewriter at a Santa Monica pawnshop within weeks, and I never ever stopped.
(I even tried to get a group of people together from film class in the early 90s, to all pitch in on a used 16mm camera, and to collectively shoot a bunch of black and white shorts and edit them together to make a feature for festival submission, to no avail.)
And yet it took me this long to really find my complete voice, purpose, mission, target audience, etc., simply because lesbianism, and so lesbian filmmaking, has not been encouraged, and worse, erased, from history, and so consequently from film history.
It is with this background in mind that I wrote the following thoughts down.
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE STATE OF LESBIAN FILMMAKING IN THE US (Part 2.)
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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)
