A Season 5 Baroness von Sketch Show sketch on "queer" films mentions When Night Is Falling, High Art, and Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives.
We've seen and reviewed the Patricia Rozema film When Night Is Falling. Definitely recommend High Art, a Canadian co-production. The last title was not on my radar but figured that had to be a real film.
Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives is a salacious title; the reality is a documentary of the stories of lesbians mixed in with a splash of lesbian pulp fiction. The disclaimer at the beginning asks: "Unless otherwise stated, the people who appear in this film should not be presumed to be homosexual … or heterosexual."
The 1992 documentary features women telling long-ago stories of girl crushes, lesbian bars, the actual reality versus the world from those pulp fiction novels, police harassment, butch vs. femmes, and more lesbian stories. These stories were likely surprising in 1992 much less watching them through a post-Millennial lens.
Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives is more about love, lust, and intimacy as opposed to specific details. In many ways, the documentary navigates through a world of whispers and discrimination as to who you were.
The stories are also uniquely Canadian so you learn the names of lesbian bars and bars that tolerated lesbianism in the 1950s and 1960s in Canada.
The stories are rather upbeat and plainly told without shame. The stories in the pulp fiction would almost always end in some tragic fashion, as if they had to pay for the "sin" of a woman being in love with another woman.
Canadian film review: When Night Is Falling
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Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman, who wrote and directed the film, brings up unapologetic storytelling. The juxtaposition with the pulp fiction is a nice contrast. The perceptions of lesbians by a lot of straight people did come from pulp fiction tales but the reality sets the story as a fuller picture.
Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives is available through the National Film Board of Canada.
photo credit: Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives film
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