New Queer Cinema

In the early 1990s, as AIDS devastated gay communities and politicians looked away, a group of queer filmmakers answered with anger, wit and style. The critic B. Ruby Rich gave the wave its name in 1992, after a run of films at festivals such as Sundance. Todd Haynes's Poison, Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, Gregg Araki's The Living End, Tom Kalin's Swoon and Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning broke with the polite, tragic gay characters of earlier cinema. In Britain, Derek Jarman, working while ill with AIDS, was its elder statesman. The wave later widened to include lesbian and Black queer voices, such as Rose Troche and Cheryl Dunye.

Where

United States, Britain and Canada, with festivals as the meeting point

When

About 1990 to 1996, with roots in the mid-1980s

Key figures

Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, Gregg Araki, Derek Jarman, Tom Kalin, Isaac Julien, Jennie Livingston, Cheryl Dunye, Rose Troche, John Greyson

Landmark films

Poison (1991), Paris Is Burning (1991), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Edward II (1991), The Living End (1992), Go Fish (1994), The Watermelon Woman (1996)

Legacy

Made queer stories a lasting part of independent cinema and opened the door for later, more mainstream films

What to look for

• Angry, funny and unapologetic stories about desire, illness and outsiders
• Low budgets, bold images and a mix of fiction, documentary and pastiche
• Characters who refuse to be respectable or to be victims