ABSTRACT
Historically, gay film began with Dickson Sound Experiment Number Three, a silent short of two men dancing that was made in the 1890s. From dawn of cinema, gay film was synonymous with experimentation but soon branched out into its second genre – pornography. The first gay film festivals were porn shows and next were avant-garde screenings. But the first overtly stated gay film festival came at the beginning of the post-Stonewall period. This was later expanded to include a variety of bad gay and lesbian narrative features which have tried artificially to establish a traditional narrative for gay life. But Imitation of Straight Life has proven to be a very unsuccessful formula indeed. The problem becomes even more dramatic because of the emergence, over the last few years, of gay features that have achieved mainstream approval and distribution. The film festivals, as community-based institutions, should be articulating an oppositional voice to the mainstream vision of what is acceptable gay cinema.
