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list price: $14.95
edition:Paperback
category: Performing Arts
published: Nov 2011
ISBN:9781551524207
publisher:
Arsenal Pulp Press
Description
A Queer Film Classic on the groundbreaking 1977 documentary that profiles the lives of ordinary gay men and lesbians of different ages, races, and backgrounds. Word Is Out found a wide audience theatrically and, perhaps more importantly, had a national public-television broadcast. The film provided an intimate portrait of gay men and lesbians, and by doing so, it played a significant role in the then-nascent struggle for gay rights. It premiered six months after Anita Bryant's infamous "Save Our Children" campaign led to the repeal of a gay rights ordinance in Florida, and just as other antigay activists were beginning to copy her tactics elsewhere in the US. With its affable portrait of twenty-six gay men and women, Word Is Out offered an important counterpoint to the homophobic rhetoric that Bryant and others were spreading.
Greg Youmans examines the historical, political, and aesthetic significance of this important film, situating it firmly in its late-1970s context. He also delves beneath the film's surface to explore the backstory of its making, from the complicated relationships among its six filmmakers (three men, three women) to the more than 140 video pre-interviews they conducted in their search for the perfect cast.
Arsenal's Queer Film Classics series cover some of the most important and influential films about and by LGBTQ people.
About the Authors
Greg Youmans is a scholar, maker, and programmer of queer film and video. His research focuses on gay and lesbian activist and experimental filmmaking of the late 1970s, in the context of the rise of the religious right and the channelling of gay and lesbian politics into a liberal, rights-based agenda. He also creates an ongoing video series with Chris Vargas, entitled Falling in Love...with Chris and Greg.
Thomas Waugh is a writer, programmer, and activist who taught film studies and sexuality at Concordia University from 1976 to 2017. He is the author of The Romance of Transgression in Canada: Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas.
Matthew Hays is a Montreal-based critic, author, and university and college instructor. His articles have appeared in a broad range of publications. His first book, The View from Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (Arsenal Pulp Press), was cited by Quill & Quire as one of the best books of 2007 and won a 2008 Lambda Literary Award. He is co-editor (with Thomas Waugh) of Queer Film Classics, a series of monographs for Arsenal Pulp Press on LGBTQ films; titles in the series include Paris Is Burning, Strangers on a Train, Law of Desire, and Female Trouble. He is the film instructor at Marianopolis College, and also teaches courses in journalism, communication studies, and film studies at Concordia University, where he received the Concordia Alumni Award for Teaching Excellence in 2007 and the President's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2013.
Editorial Reviews
Through its reading of this single film, the book advances a compelling and original frame for understanding the political transformations of the late 1970s-showing, quite brilliantly, how movement politics and film aesthetics were inextricably linked ... Youmans is consistently interesting, whether discussing the political significance of the zoom technique in Word Is Out, or relaying an anecdote about one of the 140 video pre-interviews whose subjects did not end up making the final cut. That Youmans gives as much attention to this lost material as he does to the end result is in keeping with his argument that the film's exclusions reveal the defining limits of gay liberalism-and thus the ambiguous heritage of our queer present.
-Film Quarterly
— Film Quarterly
Youmans' monograph is a work that is filled with richness and contradiction, elements that fill our daily lives.
-Senses of Cinema
— Senses of Cinema
[Youmans] sidesteps conventional narrative and is able to leap between ideas in much the same way as the film does, enabling him to draw the reader into a many-layered story almost without them noticing.
-Eye for Film
— Eye for Film
Greg Youmans' exploration of the book is serious and playful; full of queer history and film criticism.
-Radar Productions
— Radar Productions
