More than 2,000 entries, complemented with extensive film stills, short essays and reflections on the most important gay and lesbian films ever made highlight this encyclopedic reference. Includes a distributor and subject index, a directory of international gay and lesbian film festivals, and much more. Photos.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Editor Olson, former codirector of the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (SFILGFF), has compiled entries on more than 2000 shorts and feature films, most of which have been shown at the festival since its inception in 1977. Arranged alphabetically by title, entries open with sufficient videographic information?director, producer, year and country of production, language, running time, format, and U.S. and U.K. distributors?followed by descriptive/critical text ranging from one sentence to half a page. A director index, a variety of subject indexes, and directories to the films' commercial distributors and mail-order home-video distributors provide ample access to both the entries and the films themselves. Additional sections offer a history of the SFILGFF, advice on programming a festival, and queer critics' and directors' top ten lists. Though the texts tend to be too short and more critical information would be welcome (including lists of award winners), the total package is entertaining and informative. And it will prove invaluable to the student of contemporary film or gay studies as the only source of reliable information on many of the short films, documentaries, and low-budget features that comprise what has come to be known as the new queer cinema. However, precisely because of these films' obscurity, the book will be of less use to the general reader looking for something to pick up at the corner video store. All academic libraries and larger film and gay studies collections in public libraries will be best served by this current work, while general public collections should stock Raymond Murray's more mainstream Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video (LJ 3/15/95).?Eric Bryant, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
This guide includes information on more than 2,000 films and videos from many countries. They range from two-minute shorts to feature films and include a wide variety of experimental, documentary, and narrative media. It appears that the primary citerion for selection is that the film was shown at the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. The alphabetically arranged entries include basic filmographic information (director, occasionally producer, year produced, country of origin, language(s) of film, category, color/b&w, and distributor) and largely descriptive annotations adapted from blurbs in festival catalogs and distributors' advertisements. In a few instances, where adequate annotations were not available from these sources, the editor solicited comments from a small cadre of knowledgeable film enthusiasts--and these annotations are generally longer and more critical than the annotations based on festival sources.
In addition to the filmography, The Ultimate Guide contains very helpful subject and director indexes and a category index that identifies entries related to lesbian, gay, transgender, cogender, and bisexual themes. Also included is a directory of distributors, a directory of film festivals for lesbian and gay films, a checklist for film programmers offering tips on how to set up an effective film program, and a bibliography.
The main value of this filmography is that it identifies many short and/or little-known lesbian and gay films from all over the world and provides information on where to locate them. Better-known feature films such as M. Butterfly and Emmanuelle are more thoroughly discussed in Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video (TLA, 1994); some films, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls, are not even in The Ultimate Guide. The 1980 Allan Moyle film, Times Square, however, has more complete coverage in The Ultimate Guide than in Images in the Dark. For large public libraries, academic libraries supporting film studies, and specialized film libraries, The Ultimate Guide is a useful supplement to the more comprehensive Images in the Dark.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
dry, out-of-date guide,
This review is from: Ultimate Guide To Lesbian & Gay Film and Video (Paperback)
I picked up a second-hand copy of this book although useful for checking dates of films, directors etc I found it quite dry in tone and now very outdated. I found better books on amazon on this subject of gay and lesbian cinema.101 Must See Gay Movies is quite good but the best overall guide and history of gay cinema as a genre is "Out at the Movies" by Steven Paul Davies. Much more of an authoritative guide, it is beautifully produced too, from the full cover gloss cover to the many full-colour pictures included throughout. Olson's book has no pics, tiny reviews and tries to cram everything in, anything gay or lesbian, even the most obscure entries you could imagine. The 'story' of gay cinema plus more detailed reviews of individual films is told better, and decade by decade, in Out at the Movies. Plus Davies' book is an easy read, well researched, informative and revealing. I hope this is useful for anyone out there needing texts on this subject.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Guide to Independent Gay and Lesbian/Queer Cinema,
By
This review is from: Ultimate Guide To Lesbian & Gay Film and Video (Paperback)
Although now a little out of date, this gem by "The Queer Movie Poster Book" (2004) and "Homo Promo" (DVD, 2004) documents the explosion of gay and lesbian films large and small since Stonewall. Particular notice has been afforded small films and shorts which before the Internet and DVD were nearly impossible to find outside Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Film Festivals. This book served as the foundation for PopcornQ, now part of PlanetOut.com, the indispensable online resource for those who love Queer movies. Belongs on the shelf of both serious students of Queer filmmaking, and the interested filmgoer alike. The only downside, I suspect due to an academic publisher: no photogaphs from the films. Recommended.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
