Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992)

Directed by

Lynne Fernie

Genre

documentary film, LGBTQ-related film

Country

Canada

Runtime

1h 25m

Rated

14A

Rating

6.8 of 10 from 16 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary mixes interviews with older lesbians in Canada and a fictional 1950s-style melodrama to show what it was like to be a lesbian when it was still illegal. The elders talk about finding secret bars and building community, while the fictional story follows a woman's first night with another woman. The film includes clips from lesbian pulp fiction covers.

nostalgicintimatereflectivehopefulretroearnestheartfeltinformal

What happens

Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives is a 1992 Canadian hybrid drama-documentary film about Canadian lesbians navigating their sexuality while homosexuality was still criminalized. Interviews with lesbian elders are juxtaposed with a fictional story, shot in fifties melodrama style, of a small-town girl's first night with another woman. It also inserts covers of lesbian pulp fiction. The film presents the stories of lesbians whose desire for community led them on a search for the few public beer parlours or bars that would tolerate openly queer women in the 1950s and 60s in Canada. It was written and directed by Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman and featured author Ann Bannon. It premiered at the 1992 Toronto Festival of Festivals and was released in the United States on 4 August 1993. It was produced by Studio D, the women's studio of the National Film Board of Canada. In May 2014, the National Film Board of Canada ("NFB") re-released the film in a digitally remastered version. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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