Legacy of Queer Film Festivals

The assignment discusses the legacy of queer film festivals in promoting LGBTQ+ representation and acceptance. It highlights the significance of these events in creating a platform for marginalized voices to be heard and recognized. The essay also touches upon the evolution of queer cinema, from its early days as a niche genre to its current mainstream popularity. Overall, the assignment aims to demonstrate how queer film festivals have contributed to a more inclusive and accepting society.

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
BMC1433 - INTRODUCTION TO FILM
GROUP ASSIGNMENT
Lecturer : Ms. Elillarasi Kuppusamy
Submission Date : 8th Feb 2021
Group Members : -
NO. NAME STUDENT ID
1. KERTNA A/P TACHINA MURTI 1207203005
2. AISHWARYA ANBALAGAN 1207201005
3. UGINESWARI KRISHNAMOOTHY 1207193008
4. KHAVIARSI KRISHNAN 1207193010

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1
NO. CONTENTS PAGES
1. Acknowledgement 2
2. Introduction - Summary and Review of the Film 3 - 4
3. Theory - Queer Theory (Definition) 5 - 6
4. Film reflection on the theory 7 - 10
5. Correlation between the film and the theory 11 - 12
6. Conclusion 13
7. References 14 - 15

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
In performing our assignment, we had to take the help and guideline of some respected
persons, who deserve our greatest gratitude. The completion of this assignment gives us much
pleasure. We would like to show our gratitude to our lecturer, Ms. Elillarasi Kuppusamy for
giving us a good guideline for assignment throughout numerous consultations. We would also
like to expand our deepest gratitude to all those who have directly and indirectly guided us in
writing this assignment.
Many people, especially our classmates and team members itself, have made valuable
comment suggestions on this proposal which gave us the inspiration to improve our assignment.
Finally, we must express our very profound gratitude to our parents and family for
providing us with unfailing support and continuous encouragement. This accomplishment would
not have been possible without them. We thank all the people for their help directly and
indirectly to complete our assignment.
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INTRODUCTION
The film that we chose to audit and analyse is Moonlight (2016). The sort of film inside
the features of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) drama elements. The
components of the evening glow film is making the Bold Color and Contrast of Barry Jenkins'
emotional landscape. The comparability of the both movies whenever smitten by LGBT plan
which conveys Queer theory to the film.
For a few reasons, the movie Moonlight is unprecedented, but for me it's most so for two.
First, it thinks dark young men are precious, when reports never-endingly make it seem. He
assumes that they are entirely expendable.Secondly, it acknowledges the effect on gay dark
manliness of the resulting phantoms of sudden passing and incarceration and seeks a way to do it
per se while never reducing the lives filled with nuanced humanity that dark gay men currently
figure out the way to have in America while exploring that fact.
We also see a boy, Chiron, turn into a young person in Moonlight over a number of years,
but we only see him in three stages. Jenkins, and thus the entertainer who plays "Pretty much
nothing" Chiron, are surprisingly good in softening your spirit.Chiron ,presently depicted by
Ashton Sanders approaches Terrel, a domineering jerk who had requested Chiron's companion
Kevin to pulsate Chiron up, and crushes a seat over his head.The scene is sparkling, not like an
accidental demonstration of a personality's revenge that the party has experienced as delicate and
sweet, but how outwardly symbolic it is actually of something that happened.
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Gay advocacy groups were curious about the situation where two white gay men might
be struck by a straight Negro. But when it dressed up to be a few black queer guys fighting back,
they lost interest. The fictional Chiron and hence the El-Amin truth illustrate in a variety of ways
that it is possible to be black, homosexual and willing to exact revenge.Third and last part of
Moonlight, we realise that for quite a while Chiron has vanished. Jenkins handles this deftly,
without being blundering or pretentious, and makes the characters no less worthy of our support.
Indeed, even within the inspiring minutes of the film, it is disappointing that everyone in the
daily routine of Chiron is either dead or experienced under some sort of state recognition.
Moonlight is an all-black world, barren of respectability policies. In Moonlight, watching
black kids beat each other might be a call to struggle with the full truth of black gay men.
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THEORY
The theory that we chose to analyse is the Queer theory from film. The roots of Queer
theory are in LGBT analyses, concentrating on transgenderism. Owing to differences with the
stable ideologies that LGBT research shows, it soon distanced itself from those methods. The
theory of Queer illustrates the fluid and morally executed essence of homosexuality or greater
sexuality. It challenges historically defined standards and dualistic definitions with a specific
emphasis on sexual challenges, such as heterosexuals or homosexuals, races, rich or poor groups,
and racial classification systems.
Everything just reaches beyond these so-called 'binaries' in publicly or privately and
perhaps even international binary orders to challenge general policies. Those are seen as
theoretical excessively concepts that create an analysis mode that covers more than it specifies
and does not identify subtle differences and inconsistencies. Queer theory, however, often
analyzes and criticizes social and political expectations, especially when they relate to sexual
orientation and gender perception. They are not known to be private affairs. Well since feminists
consider gender as a socially imposed social and political affair, hence, queer theorists claimed in
terms of sexual orientation and gender expression.
As the phrase 'Queer' was used during the 19th century to classify homosexuality, Queer
theory reflects its origin in its social and public ways from the analysis of sexuality. In spite of
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transgenderism, a common-sense related to the term focuses on being non-conforming, thereby
adding an elusive aspect to being queer or appearing. A Queer perspective to gender equality
thus complicates identity-based LGBT activism, as a far more challenging, fluid viewpoint is
reflected in Queer thought. As the global relations of discrimination based on sexual orientation
are generating an ever-growing degree of public scrutiny, this division has become much more
prominent. In order to show that they have been 'modern' nor 'Western' enough, few states
enacted significant equality laws, whereas others have decided to respond with backlash in the
context of racist regulations and persecution. Genderqueer identity rights, which are found to be
effectively challenged as excessively contingent on Western liberal human rights and governance
values by Queer theorists, have now become political topics of discussion, eliciting domestic
gender wars too though.
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FILM REFLECTION ON THE THEORY
Moonlight is a fastidiously created, splendidly acted and extravagantly shot transitioning
film about a youthful, black gay boy experiencing childhood in destitution in rural Miami.
However eccentric as it seems to be dark, Barry Jenkins' film presently winds up wavering on the
edge of turning into the main strange film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. However,
we just need to think back the extent that Brokeback Mountain to perceive how hetero nausea
can leave even the most open strange romantic tales speechless. Or on the other hand Milk,
which went some approach to desexualise its title character and still passed up Best Picture.
The trade offs made by queer theory movies in past endeavors to break the Academy's
Best Picture glass wardrobe frequent Moonlight. We don't simply need it to win. We need it to
win in the correct manner, indicating eccentricity as we remember it. Love, however sex. Also,
not prohibited, shadowy sex as found in movies like Brokeback Mountain. Having been
disgraced for quite a long time, gay culture is presently overwhelmed by sex-inspiration, and we
esteem bluntness and trust in our sexual moments. Progressively we see it in TV and movies
made in light of just us, however when a capabilities its sights on mass allure or grants greatness,
things will in general get somewhat hesitant.
With the sexual substance of Moonlight adding up to a couple of abnormal seconds of
young adult hand-jobbing, it's not difficult to feel like the film has worked out "carefulness", as
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the Guardian's Guy Lodge put it in his new examination of the film, with regards to depicting
actual sex. There's no questioning that Moonlight isn't packed with sex. However, depicting it as
an activity in bashfulness undercuts the film. By rising above our sexual experiences, Moonlight
accounts for an unfathomably rich depiction of what sexual character is and implies for strange
men explicitly for dark eccentric men who face assumptions for hypermasculinity.
The Queer Theory may not be explained in evident manners in Moonlight, however a lot
of strangeness isn't actually expressed at all, all things considered. What the film gives rather is
seemingly more significant. By facing us with eccentric adolescence, we're compelled to
consider what growing up strange in our heteronormative society denies us of which are
wellbeing, opportunity, significant serenity, realness.
Moonlight is an investigation of parts of queerness we once in a while view as too
agonizing to even think about discussing, on the grounds that they request that we acknowledge
that a significant number of us had to trade the innocence of "typical" adolescence for steady
consciousness of our environmental factors and any possible dangers. Going up against this
through Moonlight allows strange crowds to accommodate sensations of misfortune and disdain
towards our childhoods, and start recuperating such that no sexual moment could.
Moonlight is effective in comparing various variations of manliness, some which brutally
conflict with the other, yet in addition others which calmly coincide, in a biological system of
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common trust and development. The last is showed in the intense, layered and complex
manliness of Juan (Mahershala Ali), who looms over Chiron's youth self like a defensive dad
figure; a bond which turns out to be particularly strong because of Juan's graciousness towards a
vacantly bashful and tormented Little, who fights with the nonattendance of his own dad and the
developing medication maltreatment of his mom. Juan and his sweetheart Teresa encourage
Little of warmth and acknowledgment, yet Juan is a flawed guardian, as it is uncovered in an
unexpected inversion that it is he who supplies medications to Chiron's mom. Be that as it may,
Jenkins purposely won't diminish his characters to one-dimensional elements who personality or
characterize themselves exclusively through race or sexuality, and contributes them with a sort of
healthy respectability which consistently prompts the breaking of generalizations and the fixing
of assumptions. Maybe perhaps the most suggestively delicate scenes in Moonlight is when Juan
coaches Little through a swimming exercise, which is likened to a figurative absolution of sorts;
an essential "snapshot of profound transcendence"3 between the two characters. The liquid
camera developments among Little and his coach mean an incredible bond, where two spirits "on
the planet".
Notwithstanding its immaterial disadvantages, Moonlight has manage to do what queer
cinema has rarely done before while most LGBT accounts in America are whitewashed and
coded as white, alongside the issues of deficient portrayal of eccentric and different gatherings in
the truth of the OscarsSoWhite contention, Moonlight's 2017 Oscar win is a huge one. The
particularity of strange battle and character inside the setting of obscurity, maleness and
neediness is the last detract from this enabling workmanship piece albeit mammoth advances are
yet to be taken towards the deconstruction of intersectional personality legislative issues,
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Moonlight overcomes any issues between our comprehension of the relationship among's racial
and sexual philosophy in American masculinist talk.
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CORRELATION BETWEEN THE FILM AND THE THEORY
The film Moonlight (2016) directed by Barry Jenkins have a correlation with the Queer
theory. This film emphasizes the story of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT)
community.
The first correlation from the film, Moonlight with the Queer theory is the main battle of
Chiron is trying to find out his own sexuality, and he also met school bullies who torture him
relentlessly with homophobic names and physical abuse when he reaches teenage years, he share
an intimate moment with his close friend Kevin which shows him as gay. This shows the queer
relationship between Kevin and Chiron.
The second correlation from Moonlight with the Queer theory is the film exerted caution
and means for queer men (gay) who face hypermasculinity standards, where gay sex manifested
by hypermasculinity can be as risky as it is liberating. Because of this issue, one out of two black
queer men would contract HIV in their lifetime, so we can undertand the main reason for
avoidance of sex by the main character Chiron in this film.
In addition, from the movie Moonlight, usually the LGBT community is not accepted by
some countries and certain individuals which causes disruption in their life is another correlation
between the film and the Queer theory. Chirron Harris faces many difficulties with his
socioeconomic status and his sexual identity. When he reaches adulthood, he is unable to accept
his sexuality because of his troubled environment he was raised as well as the people around him
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for example, even his own mother Paula knows about his sexuality and problem but she does not
want to talk to him .
The last correlation in the film is the characteristics of a queer character, The director
encourages queerness in other ways to emerge. For instance, we understand the relaxation when
Chiron reunites with Kevin, he feels in the awareness that he is safe to be his true self. The
loneliness of Chiron is queer, and get isolated by people due to his sexual identity therefore when
he found the queer guy like him he felt secured.
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CONCLUSION
A majority of researchers claim that queerness is influenced and accented by racial
values, gender identity, and perhaps even sexual orientations, yet they have developed work that
explores the blind eye of Queer Theory towards the racial aspects of the identities it investigates.
According to Barnard 2004, queer analysis reveals the lack of consideration paid to race issues
and also examines important race study work that disregards sexuality.
In conclusion, Queer filmmakers have helped to establish a lively underground and
alternate scenes for films. New Queer Cinema questioned existing ideas in the 'nineties that
queer authority can only come into the mainstream heterosexual culture through assimilation.
Through the usage of strong irony and an antagonistic to the naturalistic form that ruled cinema
at the period, filmmakers like Barry Jenkins, Derek Jarman, Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, John
Waters, and John Cameron Mitchell accomplished this.
For obvious reasons, the authenticity of the story in Moonlight (2016) film is broken
through the usage of music, meta-narrative, where the actors realize that they are in a constantly
fluctuating movie, visual effects, and personalities. In general, the post-op homosexual who has
undergone a failed sex-change surgery and executes a destabilized sexual identity that is still a
hybrid is the main character. Meanwhile, New Queer Cinema vanished only as a trend as
queerness within the mainstream has become more appropriate. Nevertheless, in the context of
queer film festivals that occur all over the nation, the revolution has left behind a legacy.
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REFERENCES
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9791286-0185-div1-0017.
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5. Moonlight isn’t all about sex – and it’s all the more queer for it. Little White Lies.
(2021). Retrieved 8 February 2021, from
https://lwlies.com/articles/moonlight-barry-jenkins-sex-queer-cinema/.
6. Moonlight portrays black gay life in its joy, sadness and complexity. the Guardian.
(2021). Retrieved 8 February 2021, from
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https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/29/moonlight-movie-barry-jenkins-black-ga
y.
7. Moonlight review – a visually ravishing portrait of masculinity. the Guardian. (2021).
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