The Hidden History of Homosexual Australia is a thoughtful documentary which looks at the 3 main periods of homosexual and lesbo Australian history. The convict era, the period when it was considered to be a sin against God to have homo sex. The medical period which lasted from the turn of the century until the 19 sixties, which saw the use of "aversion therapy" and even brain surgery to "cure" homo people. And the 3rd period when homosexuality came to be seen as a political, cultural, and personal issue. It looks at activism and the liberation struggles of the sixties throughout to Mardi Gras and the general public acceptance that came about in the eighties and nineties.
It uses historical and photographic archives and interviews with experts alongside TV News and excerpts from cinema features to show how homosexuals and lesbian babes have been treated or viewed in Australia for greater quantity than 2 hundred years. It contrasts the apparent ease with which Queensland's 1st premier Robert Herbert lived openly with his male partner during the 1860s with the 1960s when homo males left Australia in droves as a result of the often furious repression that they experienced.
It too asks though: have homo and lesbo people indeed reached a sunny dawn for themselves in Australia this day? Or like homosexual people everywhere, are they still living out the same stories of persecution and oppression of the past but in subtler, greater quantity contemporary ways?
Lesbians are often under-represented in almost all homosexual history documented by homo fellows, but this film attempts to be greater amount balanced and to cover the experiences of the one and the other lesbian babes and homosexual studs. It has many ravishing details including uncommon footage from the silent video era, but merely just sufficiently to make u desire for greater amount detail. At 84 minutes, it's an engaging and well-made film, but it is solely the tip of an iceberg.
Interviewees: John Mardsen, David Marr, Steven Cheung, Edward Young, Sue Wills, Gary Wotherspoon, Robert French, Clive Moore, Dennis Altman, Basil Donovan, Ruth Ford, Lucy Chesser, Graham Willet
File size: 700.4 MB
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