Rebecca Beirne

Teen Lesbian Desires and Identities in International Cinema: 1931–2007

This article provides an overview of representations of teenage lesbian desires and/or identity in a global cinematic context, addressing twenty-seven films from fourteen nations released between 1931 and 2007. Despite temporal and geographical differences, three main forms of film texts emerged: those that engaged in sub or somewhat textual depictions of teen lesbian desires and relationships; others that offered a tragic take on lesbian desire; and the dominant form, engaging with a coming of age narrative structure.

Screening the Dykes of Oz: Lesbian Representation on Australian Television

This article provides a survey of lesbian representation in Australian-made television programming. Beginning with the 1970s, when Australia led the Anglophone world in terms of queer representation on television, the article discusses major instances of queer women appearing on Australian television including in such shows as Prisoner, Home & Away, Neighbours, All Saints, The Secret Life of Us, Last Man Standing, and Kick.

Piracy, Geoblocking, and Australian Access to Niche Independent Cinema

Online audiovisual piracy cannot be properly understood if divorced from its context. This article uses the availability of lesbian-focused films in Australia as a lens through which to consider the relationship between online audiovisual piracy and industry geoblocking practices. It is argued that artificial control through internet geoblocking can limit potential global sales by restricting universal availability of certain films. Anti-piracy discourses around lost sales and reduced profits for film industries are complicated by piracy contexts where there is no mechanism for viewers to make legal online purchases. When looking beyond Hollywood, the diverse purposes of independent and minority filmmakers provide a more complex understanding of piracy overall. This article proposes a more nuanced approach to online film piracy that emphasizes context, taking into consideration that pirate culture is formed by an extensive but inchoate network of individuals with diffuse motivations that have differential impacts upon the industry.

Trauma and Triumph: Documenting Middle Eastern Gender and Sexual Minorities in Film and Television

Bill Nichols, in Representing Reality (1991), tells us: Fiction harbours echoes of dreams and daydreams, sharing structures of fantasy with them, whereas documentary mimics the canons of expository argument, the making of the case, and the call to public rather than private response …. If movies (fiction) “reflect” our culture, and if this mirror image is the fundamental, determining definition of cinema, then documentaries, too, must pass through this “defile” of a reflection. (p. 4) As Nichols observes, there are dual characteristics of documentary. It can be conceptualized as a discourse that represents reality, and it can also be seen to be a clearly mediated form, with editing, scriptwriting and narration shaping the raw, “real” footage that we see in the documentary medium. Nonetheless, in terms of audience response, documentary becomes an example of reality rather than negotiation with reality. While fictional representations of sexual and, to some extent, gender minorities has increased quantitatively and qualitatively in recent years, the debates surrounding the positive or negative attributes of such representation have often centred on charges of a lack of realism. Within such a context, documentary representations of culturally marginalized identity positions can hold some power by providing a sense of authenticity, of real queers with real stories to tell.