Abstract

This study concerns itself with the visual representations of The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival (a.k.a. Reeling) with specific attention paid to their marketing campaign materials, as exemplified by the annually created festival poster. It is my aim to situate these posters alongside the historical contexts of queer identity, sociopolitical advocacy, and LGBTQ+ cinema. This analysis will navigate the 36-year period of the festival organization’s existence, providing key in-depth interrogations into the decades, images, and trends both visual and narrative. My unpacking and theoretical discussions of the festival’s visual culture has been informed by the practices of semiotics and film genre theory. These methods were employed to answer the primary research question: How have the poster advertisements, as visual signifiers for The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, symbolized their organization’s mission, represented queer identities, and engaged with the politically contested history of queer cinematic representation?

Queer film festivals, queer archives, Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, semiotics of film, queer theory
The text of this article is only available as a PDF.

References

Alcoff, L. (1992). The problem of speaking for others. Cultural Critique, 20, 5–32.
Altman, R. (1984). A semantic/syntactic approach to film genre. Cinema Journal, 23(3), 6–18.
Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. (A. Lavers, Trans.). New York, NY: Hill & Wang. (Original work published 1957)
Barthes, R. (1977). Image-music-text. (S. Heath, Trans.). New York, NY: Hill & Wang.
Barthes, R. (1988). The semiotic challenge. New York, NY: Hill & Wang.
Blonsky, M. (Ed.). (1985). On signs. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Chauncey, G. (1989). Hidden from history: Reclaiming the gay and lesbian past. New York, NY: New American Library.
Corazzo, N. (2000). The freaky female body: Mary Ellen Mark’s photograph of Shavanas Begum, the Indian circus strongwoman, 1989. In S. Simpkins & J. Deely (Eds.), Semiotics 2000: “Sebeok’s century” (pp. 130–141). Ottawa: ON: Legas.
Darder, A. (2009). Decolonizing the flesh: The body, pedagogy, and inequality. In R. S. Coloma (Ed.), Counterpoints. Vol. 369: Postcolonial challenges in education (pp. 217–232). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Duberman, M. (Ed.). (1997). A queer world: The center for lesbian and gay studies reader. New York, NY: NYU Press.
Faderman, L. (1991). Odd girls and twilight lovers: A history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York, NY: Random House.
Gamson, J. (1996). The organizational shaping of collective identity: The case of lesbian and gay film festivals in New York. Sociological Forum, 11(2), 231–262.
Gomez, J. (1991). The Gilda stories. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books.
Gomez, J. (1993). Forty-three Septembers: Essays. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books.
Hanawa, Y. (1996). Inciting sites of political interventions: Queer ‘n’ Asian. Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, 4(3), 459–489.
Hebdidge, D. (1979). Subculture: The meaning of style. London: Routledge.
Heidenreich, N. (2005). Queer film and video forum, take one: Curators speak out. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 11(4), 579–603.
Hey, J. (2017). A new queer trinity: A semiotic, genre theory, and auto-ethnographic examination of Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival (Doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University). Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2332/d056891d6f45c0f1e9cca0ed78703b3c48d5.pdf?_ga=2.84810769.941559021.1581540397–1317790539.1579209159
Horne, P., & Lewis, R. (1996). Introduction. In P. Horne & R. Lewis (Eds.), Outlooks: Lesbian and gay sexualities and visual cultures (pp. 1–12). London: Routledge.
Iordanova, D. (Ed.). (2013). The film festival reader. St. Andrews, England: St. Andrews Film Studies.
Jeffords, S. (1993). Can masculinity be terminated? In G. Turner (Ed.), The film cultures reader (pp. 344–354). London: Routledge.
Kalin, T. (1992). Flesh histories. In A. Klusacek & K. Morrison (Eds.), A leap in the dark: AIDS, art, and contemporary cultures (pp. 120–135). Montreal, QC: Vehiculé Press.
Kanner, M. (2002). Toward a semiotics of butch. The Gay and Lesbian Review, 9(2), 27–29.
Lotman, Y. M. (2000). Universe of the mind: A semiotic theory of culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Namaste, V. (1999). The use and abuse of queer tropes: Metaphor and catachresis in queer theory and politics. Social Semiotics, 9(2), 213–236.
Parmar, P. (1993). That moment of emergence. In M. Gever and J. Greyson (Eds.), Queer looks: Perspectives on lesbian and gay film and video (pp. 3–11). Toronto, ON: Routledge.
Plummer, K. (2000). Mapping the sociological gay: Past, presents, and futures of a sociology of same sex relations. In T. Sandfort, J. Schuyf, J. W. Duyvendak, & J. Weeks (Eds.), Lesbian and gay studies: An introductory, interdisciplinary approach (pp. 46–60). London: Sage Publications.
Porter, G. (1995). Seeing through solidarity: A feminist perspective on museums. The Sociological Review, 43(1), 105–126.
Rich, B. R. (2006). The new homosexual film festivals. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 12(4), 620–625.
Rich, B. R. (2013). New queer cinema: The director’s cut. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Rich, B. R., Clarke, E. O., Fung, R., White, P., & Daniel, M. R. (1999). Queer publicity: A dossier on lesbian and gay film festivals. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 5(1), 73–94.
Romo-Carmona, M. (2001). Conversaciones: Relatos de padres y madres de hijas lesbianas y hijos gay. San Francisco, CA: Cleis Press.
Smith-Shank, D. (Ed.). (2004a). Semiotics and visual culture: Sights, signs, and significance. Alexandria, VA: National Art Education Association.
Smith-Shank, D. (2004b). What’s your sign? Searching for the semiotics self. In D. Smith-Shank (Ed.), Semiotics and visual culture: Sights, signs, and significance (pp. 1–4). Alexandria, VA: National Art Education Association.
Tudor, A. (1973). Genre. In B. K. Grant (Ed.), Film genres reader II (pp. 3–10). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Copyright 2020 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
2020