lgbt film

After watching a handful of films from the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s latest series, “An Early Clue to the New Direction: Queer Cinema Before Stonewall,” I started asking myself: What does it mean to be queer?

One of the most exciting things about this year in film is how diverse the industry has become in terms of LGBT representation. With films such as The Danish Girl, Freeheld, Tangerine and About Ray, among others, hitting on rarely explored topics relating to queer and transgender characters, the big screen is showcasing a variety of stories that are slowly shifting the landscape of how gender and sexuality are depicted in cinema. However, off screen discussions about coming out of the closet and embracing one’s sexuality have hardly changed for the better. If anything, recent comments by both Matt Damon and Tom Hardy reflect a larger problem in Hollywood that, at a moment of seeming progress, feels stuck in a former conservative era.