08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
How censors tried — and failed — to keep LGBT voices out of the movies
What exactly is 'queer cinema' — and how should we understand it today? Michael Koresky has devoted much of his career to answering this question. As curator of the Criterion Channel's Queersighted series, he's shone new light on LGBTQ+ themes by juxtaposing rarely seen gems of world cinema with more famous films, both expected ('Mulholland Drive') and less so ('Addams Family Values'). His book on the British filmmaker Terence Davies argued that the queerness of Davies's work derived from not just the director's homosexuality but also how his oeuvre 'deviates from the formal and cultural concerns of his cinematic contemporaries.' In 'Films of Endearment,' Koresky and his mother revisited movies they'd first watched when he was growing up, including the camp classic 'Mommie Dearest,' whose 'abhorrent delights' they had shared even before Koresky came out to her 'as though they were part of some as yet untranslated language.'
