FORBIDDEN LOVE: THE UNASHAMED STORIES OF LESBIAN LIVES
dir. Aerlyn Weissman & Lynne Fernie, 1992.
Canada, 84 mins.
In English.
SATURDAY, JUNE 6 — 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10 — 7:30 PM (16mm, $10)
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17 — 7:30 PM (16mm, $10)
2k restoration by the National Film Board of Canada, 16mm print provided by the New York Public Library.
Wryly following in the tradition of the 1965 exploitation “documentary” Chained Girls, Weissman and Fernie’s Forbidden Love is a sweet and tender oral history of mid-century Canadian lesbianism dressed up in pulp trappings. Reveling in the aesthetics of verboten paperbacks and sleazy exposé, this style is merely an ironic wink of a framing encapsulating the true stories of openly gay women in the forties, fifties, and sixties, searching for community, rebellion and love. Nine women dramatize their own personal histories, and the filmmakers additionally interview lesbian pulp novelist Ann Bannon. Along with the feature documentaries of Barbara Hammer and the fictional melodrama of Desert Hearts, Forbidden Love played a role in reclaiming the lesbian narrative from tragedy to triumph, becoming a staple in many young queers’ first KG freeleech queues in the decades since. Lovingly restored by the National Film Board of Canada in 2022 from a 16mm interpositive (the film is shot on a mix of 16mm and 35mm), Spectacle is pleased to show the film both in its recently cleaned-up digital form as well as on a 16mm print, care of the NYPL.