Bent Lens: An Interview with Claire Jackson and Lisa Daniel Bent Lens, the only comprehensive guide to gay and lesbian film, is being re-released in a fully updated version. Now you'll never be short of titles to confuse and confound your local Blockbuster 14 year old with. On a busy weekend in a virtual email far, far away, Geoff Parkes connected up with Australian authors Claire and Lisa to discuss queer core cinema, the future of bent cinema, and ultimately, Catherine Denueve's hunger. The Bent Lens was first released in 1996 - why did you feel a need to update it? There's been so many great queer films released between 1996 and the present that it felt like time to produce a newer and better version - and we'll probably aim to produce subsequent versions every 5 - 6 years just to keep each edition up to date.   Whatever happened to Queercore cinema? Where did Gregg Araki (Totally Fucked Up, The Doom Generation) go? Gregg changed teams! Last we heard about Gregg he was dating a girl and making increasingly 'straight' telemovies! I guess Queercore kind of fizzled out in the end.   (free plug time) Why would somebody want your book? Well it's currently the only book of its kind in the world - there have been a couple of previous attempts to compact the history of queer film into one book, but they were generally not terribly international, and tended to concentrate on the US and Europe. We like to think that it's the sort of publication that will have a variety of uses - propped on the coffee table in the telly room to be used for constant consultation whilst watching queer films, as an addition to other text books for those studying queer cinema. It would also be really useful for queer film festival staff in programming festivals, and for those who want to keep track of what's been going on in queer cinema since 1914 - it's so useful because it includes a wide variety of information - obviously main credit details, but also synopses, distribution information, etc for each title. It's also a bonus to have the essays by queer film authorities on topics that we thought were relevant to queer cinema at the moment - and we think they're a great read.   What processes did you have to go through to research this book? How difficult was it to access the material? How did you persuade your loved ones that an 8 hour Liberace movie marathon was really work? Since there was a first edition, part of the process involved honing some of the info that was included in that edition - due to space issues, we had to make a decision to only include films of 10 minutes and over. It would have been completely impractical to include ALL films. We fine-tuned some of index features, added things. So with the work done on the first edition combined with the 2nd we're probably looking at about 10 years work. Given our other jobs in the queer film arena (Claire is co-convenor at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival - 6 years, Lisa is the Festival Director - 5 years), we are probably 2 of the best people to produce such a book. Whilst many of the films in The Bent Lens are great examples of filmmaking, I have to say that not EVERY title is necessarily something that you'd want to include in any movie marathon! We have to say that the increased accessibility of filmmaking technology has NOT always been a good thing!   What's been the most influential bent flick of the last 5 years and why? We'd probably take it back a bit further and say 'Go Fish' (1994) - it really illustrated that you could make great queer films, with good scripts and great acting on the budget you'd normally allocate to an afternoon tea with your folks. It made huge amounts at the box office, and proved to conservative production people and studios that it doesn't always have to be about 'the star'. It opened the door for other talented directors to be given a chance to put their stories to celluloid.   Where to from here for Bent cinema? What hasn't been explored? It's probably an interesting time for bent cinema - due to some of the factors outlined above, its probably become a slightly more commercial 'genre' of filmmaking as queerness becomes less terrifying to the mainstream in a cultural and moral sense. We would perhaps predict that as a result some queer filmmakers might seek to reclaim a more subversive tone to their work and try to restate their queerness that way.   Are you aware you share a moniker with an optometrist's practice in Denver? We weren't - but such a 'straight' looking website for such a queer name!   What kind of contributions have Australians made to bent cinema, apart from Beefhead (R Crowe in Sum of Us), bitchy drag queen (Priscilla, Bedrooms and Hallways), wanna be drag queen (N Kidman in M Rouge) and indy bi films such as Love & Other Catastrophes and Strange Fits of Passions? Feature wise it's been pretty scarce - although those films have hopefully opened the doors for others. We'd hoped that 'Head On' (1998) might provide an impetus for more films of that ilk - but as yet, nothing seems to have transpired. but that probably says more about the lack of decent development funding for filmmakers than anything else - the little money that is available seems to have been be doled out to some really substandard projects over recent years in this country. The real strengths in queer filmmaking at present seem to lie with the folk making short films - there have been some fantastic films come out of places like the Victorian College of the Arts, and the Australian Film TV & Radio School of recent years, as well as from independents - titles like - 'Kicking On (Jamie Browne), 'Daphne & Ollie' (Emma Freeman), 'Bare (Deb Strutt & Liz Baulch), 'Sweet Thing (Mark Robinson) just to name a few. We hope those people will at some stage gather the finance to make something great in long form.   Why did you both write this book - what is it about bent cinema that makes you quiver, that makes you devote large chunks of your life to watching mediocre movies in the hope of something more, and then even more chunks of your life writing about it? Why are you passionate about it? Not good at anything else I guess!   Final ditzy question here - favourite bent flick? Too many favourites to mention, but 'The Hunger' sticks in my memory because I saw it at an age where I realised there was more to films than the latest James Bond flick - not that there's anything wrong with that!   Bent Lens is available now from Allen & Unwin and from Alyson in the US.