The queer and LGBTQ+ community has been often sidelined by cinema and television for decades. Be it casual homophobia or transphobia that permeates films to potentially more harmful examples like The Danish Girl (2015). One could argue that the intentions were in the right place, but the results were a disaster for the representation of the community.
Fiction can portray the issues faced by queer people with accuracy and care, but so often, the wrong people are working on the films, both in front of and behind the camera, in Hollywood especially. This is where the value of documentaries becomes so apparent.
Many of the landmarks of queer cinema have been non-fiction, allowing queer voices to represent themselves and portray their stories without the misinterpretation or simplification of misguided creatives or craven executives who see authentic queer stories as unmarketable.
A landmark documentary for portraying queer people’s stories was Paris is Burning. The 1990 film exposed people to the underground ballroom drag culture of 1980s New York City and the intersection of Black and Latino gay and trans people. Directed by Jennie Livingston, an out lesbian filmmaker, it was worked on for over seven years and composed from over 75 hours of footage down to a lean 78-minute runtime.
The film is a celebration of the queer liberation found in this subculture, where queer people thrived and achieved celebrity status amongst their peers in a time of even greater bigotry and ignorance.
Paris Dupree, one of the subjects of the film who inspired the title, is even credited with creating voguing – though this is a debated topic.
The AIDS crisis and the way that it ravaged so many queer communities throughout the 1980s is highlighted in the film, as well as common issues trans people face, like being forced into sex work and being at increased risk of hate crime and violence.
Paris is Burning (1990) was beloved and became a great success critically and commercially; impressive considering the conservative culture it was released in. It even attracted the likes of Madonna, who attended a premiere of the film’s premiere in Los Angeles.
Still widely acclaimed over 30 years later, the film demonstrates the ability documentaries have to present an accurate portrayal of queer life and culture, and it doesn’t run the risk of becoming outdated or indulging in stereotyping that fiction films do.
As an example, Paris is Burning was released the same year as The Silence of the Lambs, a film that has, at best, aged awkwardly in its portrayal of a trans villain and was responsible for a lot of damage to the trans community.
Contrasted with Paris is Burning, this demonstrates how easily fiction can fall into harmful tropes and cause damage to marginalised communities’ perception with the wider public that documentaries avoid by allowing people to speak for themselves.
Flash forward 30 years, and the topics covered in Paris is Burning are still as relevant as ever. Pier Kids, produced from 2011 to 2016 and released in 2021, similarly documents the lives of gay and transgender individuals whose stories are otherwise sidelined in cinema.
Filmmaker Elegance Bratton brings the audience into the queer community of Manhattan’s Chelsea Piers, spotlighting queer Black lives in a way that made many reflect back to Livingston’s film.
Following the daily struggles of Crystal LaBeija, Casper and Desean, Bratton’s film highlights the lives of homeless gay and transgender Black youth. They grapple with the very real effects of urban gentrification and violent policing, as well as discrimination on all levels–from unaccepting family members to brutal attacks on the street.
Pier Kids (2019) offers a reality not often seen by many. It confronts those watching to consider their safety and privilege. Where we see these kids engage in impromptu voguing sessions on the sidewalk, expressing their queerness within their own community, this moment of joy is cut short by the sound of police sirens.
Through this lens of reality, the idea of New York as a city for everyone and its image in modern society as a safe place for queer kids to unite is challenged. The stories of what community means to young gay and transgender people of colour are translated for an audience in a way that mainstream feature films rarely accomplish.
As recently as only two years ago, documentaries are still highlighting how the AIDS crisis destroyed queer communities. Whilst not the sole focus, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, directed by Laura Poitras, highlights the effects of AIDS as the subject – Nan Goldin – was a key activist in the 1980s. The film won the top prize, The Golden Lion, at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar.
Beyond seminal events like the AIDS crisis or key queer communities, documentaries can be a form to tackle individuals in history of significance in a much more elegant form than biopics or other films.
Two noteworthy examples are I Am Divine, which is focused on drag icon Divine, who starred in several John Waters films, and The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, which focuses on the trans icon who was crucial in the Stonewall riots. Again, this contrasts with the film Stonewall, which whitewashed and ciswashed those involved in the riots.
Documentaries can also interrogate cinema’s own relationship with queer communities and representation, with two examples being The Celluloid Closet and Disclosure. These films have received some pushback for being outdated or not fully examining the topics, but they provide a much more upfront interrogation of cinema’s relationship to LGBTQ+ subjects than many fiction films would be willing to.
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As an art form, documentaries can often be ignored in film discussion, not just in the context of queer films. Yet these films highlight not just the strength the medium has to succeed where fiction cannot but also that it is so much more than regurgitating information or simply acting as a cinematic form of homework.
These films mark pivotal moments in queer history, and as pride month begins, they are worthy watches to educate, entertain, and move any viewer.
