QUEER FILM CLASSICS is a critically acclaimed series that launched in 2009, edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays, covering some of the most important and influential films about and/or by LGBT people made between 1950 and 2005, and written by leading LGBT film scholars and critics.

A Queer Film Classic on the 1992 Canadian feature documentary subtitled "The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives": a film on lesbian experience from the 1940s to the 1960s as seen through the lens of lesbian pulp fiction. The film interweaves an historical dramatization with interviews with women who speak frankly about their experiences living as lesbians in times when they could not be out, as well as with Ann Bannon, the American writer who wrote lesbian pulp fiction novels from 1957 to 1962 known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. This award-winning movie, directed by Aerlyn Weissman and Lynne Fernie, ended up as the most successful ever produced by the National Film Board of Canada, and became emblematic of the bold new queer cinema of the early 1990s. In 2014, the NFB re-released the film in a digitally remastered version.

Jean Bruce and Greta Cammaer's book examines the historical context and critical reception of this important film.

Jean Bruce and Gerda Cammaer are both associate professors in the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto. Bruce's research interests include Canadian cinema, and advertising and consumer culture; Cammaer's research interests include documentary and found-footage films. They both live in Toronto.

Jean Bruce's profile page

Jean Bruce and Gerda Cammaer are both associate professors in the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto. Bruce's research interests include Canadian cinema, and advertising and consumer culture; Cammaer's research interests include documentary and found-footage films. They both live in Toronto.

Gerda Cammaer's profile page

Thomas Waugh is the award-winning author or co-author of numerous books, including five for Arsenal Pulp Press: Out/Lines, Lust Unearthed, Montreal Main: A Queer Film Classic (with Jason Garrison), Comin' At Ya! (with David L. Chapman) and Gay Art: A Historic Collection (with Felix Lance Falkon). His other books include Hard to Imagine, The Fruit Machine, and The Romance of Transgression. He teaches film studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where he lives. He has published widely on political discourses and sexual representation in film and video, on lesbian and gay film and video, and has more recently undertaken interdisciplinary research and teaching on AIDS. He is also the founder and former coordinator of the Minor Programme in Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality at Concordia.

In addition to the titles below, Thomas is also co-editor (with Matthew Hays) of the Queer Film Classics series.

Thomas Waugh's profile page

Matthew Hays is a Montreal-based critic, author, film festival programmer, and university instructor. He is the co-editor (with Thomas Waugh) of Arsenal Pulp's Queer Film Classics series. He has been a film critic and reporter for the weekly Montreal Mirror since 1993. His first book, The View from Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (Arsenal Pulp Press), was cited by Quill & Quire as one of the best books of 2007 and won a 2008 Lambda Literary Award. His articles have appeared in a broad range of publications, including The Guardian, The Daily Beast, The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, Vice, The Walrus, The Advocate, The Toronto Star, The International Herald Tribune, Cineaste, Cineaction, Quill & Quire, This Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Canadian Screenwriter, and Xtra!. He teaches courses in journalism, communication studies and film studies at Concordia University, where he received his MA in communication studies in 2000. A two-time nominee for a National Magazine Award, Hays received the 2013 Concordia President's Award for Teaching Excellence. .
Matthew is also co-editor (with Thomas Waugh) of the Queer Film Classics series.

Matthew Hays' profile page

Bruce and Cammaer deal dexterously with the film and the historical discourse it both participates in and disrupts; in their care Forbidden Love becomes more than a film about history and emerges as an historical act itself. -POV Magazine

POV Magazine

The book provides incredible insight into co-directors Lynne Fernie and Aerlyn Weissman's groundbreaking documentary. -AfterEllen

AfterEllen

The book serves as an excellent companion to the film, recontextualizing Forbidden Love's re-release with rich production detail, pithy formal analysis, critical theory and provocative cultural commentary. -POV Magazine

POV Magazine