Re-Imagining Queer Cinema: Finding the Accent in Queer FIlmmaking

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Re-Imagining Queer Cinema

Finding the Accent in Queer Filmmaking

MA Programme in Film Studies

Supervisor:

Maryn C. Wilkinson

Second reader:

Marie-Aude Baronian

MA thesis by:

Yunus Emre Duyar

Amsterdam, 26

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_{June 2015}

Word Count: 17,825

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I would like to thank the people who were there for me during this year of hard work. First of all, I would like to thank my advisor Maryn Wilkinson for providing me with meticulous feedback along the way, her unwavering support and just being there for me in every way. This paper would not have been possible without Marie-Aude Baronian encouraging my initial thesis idea during the course Film Theories & Practices. I would also like to thank other lecturers for nurturing my academic capabilities and my classmates who shared the several highs and lows of being a student in producing original thinking on films.

I would like thank Reyhan Baykara, for her words of encouragement and all around psychological support during the whole year. I would like to thank dear friends Charlotte Marland and Elif Ozdemir for proofreading my work and giving me good feedback along the way. And lastly, I would like to thank the queer filmmakers who are invested in their films against all odds and produce such masterpieces that capture many sides of being queer and other scholars cited in this paper, who helped me understand the complexities of the queer experience.

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INTRODUCTION

I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch the terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the

personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

Audre Lorde (Lorde 113, emphasis in original)

Experiences of being a queer individual traditionally involves an attempt to come out, or move to a different place, in an attempt to claim new space and gain social recognition; however, facing hostile treatment is often part of the equation. The notion of moving to urban places for the freedom of queer individual often results in failed attempts to integrate, which creates problems of belonging.

George Chauncey, a scholar with a special interest in the history of the gay culture, states the following on the attempt of coming out in his article “Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public: Gay Uses of the Streets”: “There is no queer space; there are only spaces used by queers or put to queer use. … Nothing illustrates this general principle more clearly than the tactics developed by gay men and lesbians to put the spaces of the dominant culture to queer uses” (224). Indeed, in the largely heteronormative space, queer individuals translate their personal spaces (which is mostly assumed to be that of heteronormativity) into a queer one by coming out. From this point of view, urban areas have been traditionally regarded, and put to use, as places of arrival for queer subjects, where the queer individual – estranged or not – goes through a transformation and displacement that shapes perception and identification mechanisms. As happens with every culture and sub-culture, art plays an important part in laying the foundations of a new culture. Film is one of these veins of art that the queer culture has heavily tapped into for constructing the queer culture and queer spaces. It is this

formulation of places that this paper is focused on, and it is a meditation on what spatial formulations around gender and sexuality means for the queer and how these issues are reflected on in films.

Although cinema has played an important part in the forming of a queer culture, the stories that have been told about queer subjects remain largely monolithic. While stories of coming out and having a family have constituted a large part of mainstream queer narratives, queer subject as part of different cultural contexts – where different mechanisms of being

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queer is present – are largely ignored by the mainstream cinema. By erasing the differences in each and every queer experience, these narratives mostly involved reiterated stories from a mainstream point of view. As a result, stories of coming out, gay marriage and having a family set the cornerstones of the mainstream queer culture. Although there are films telling unique queer stories from different cultural perspectives, these films often go unmentioned and are often categorized under the umbrella genre of queer cinema. Another central aim of this paper is to bring these queer films to the foreground and revision how these queer films can be located in relation their engagement with identity politics in film.

Queer films’ narratives are generally interested in traumatic experiences that are strongly tied to having a queer identity. Especially in alternative and independent works such as The Turkish Bath (1997), My Own Private Idaho (1991) and XXY (2007), these experiences are analysed under different interacting mechanisms of what makes an identity. In these films, queer characters’ experiences include feelings of loneliness and entrapment in

heteronormative societies. From this perspective, being queer can resemble to being displaced and trying to fit in a new land which might not welcome the queer subject eventually.

However, queer cinema is, of course, not the only filmmaking tradition that is fascinated with the politics of displacement and its representation in filmic form.

One of the prominent scholars who are focused on the politics of displacement is Hamid Naficy, an Iranian-American film scholar with influential work published on exilic, diasporic and postcolonial filmmakers. His book An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001) offers a comprehensive list of filmmakers who have exilic, diasporic and postcolonial identities (Naficy 10). Naficy’s framework analyses similar elements of

filmmaking caused by displacement in these filmmakers’ works and groups these under the term ‘accented cinema’ (10). By bringing out the stylistic differences that these filmmakers have from the mainstream films, Naficy’s book creates a diverse platform, where the national context does not necessarily inform one’s filmmaking style (19). His book opens up the limitations that such categorizations bring about and centres film style around filmmaker’s personal and social experiences (19).

Naficy’s conceptual framework defines several characteristics, including film style, production techniques, use of several literary devices such as chronotopes, epistolarity and border writing. One of the central premises that the accented cinema rests on is the

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metropolitan areas, which creates an “accent” in the films used by these directors (Naficy 4). However, this displacement does not only represent a physical move from one country to another. The reasons behind the displacement, the time of the displacement and the

experiences related to the displacement, both on the individual and the collective level, are also important for the formation of an "accent" in the filmic language (Moodley 66-67). Similarly, as will be seen in this paper, some queer films that are not characterized as part of accented cinema (in terms of how they deal with displacement) can still be vested with similar characteristics that are caused by the experience of displacement.

The reason why the filmmakers used in this paper would not be called as being ‘accented’ are all queer filmmakers still living in their home countries. However, their films are marked with the feeling of change brought about by displacement. I will use this initial observation and expand on it throughout my paper. The films analysed are: Zenne Dancer (2012) by Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay, The Long Day Closes (1992) by Terence Davies, Weekend (2011) by Andrew Haigh, J’ai tué ma mère (2009) by Xavier Dolan and Pariah (2011) by Dee Rees. Revisiting queer filmmaking in the context of accented cinema will be helpful in addressing the existence of such a vein in queer filmmaking that involves the works of various queer filmmakers across the globe, all of whom are assumed to be united by the shared feeling of displacement.

Zenne Dancer is about the friendship of three people coming from different

backgrounds. Can (Kerem Can) is a male belly dancer who is actually asexual, Ahmet (Erkan Avci) is a Kurdish man who hides his sexuality from his parents and Daniel (Giovanni

Arvaneh) is a German man on a photography project in Istanbul. The film is mainly about the struggles of being a queer person in Turkey and how even the urban life in Istanbul cannot provide shelter to Ahmet, who is murdered by his homophobic parents in the end. Weekend is about Russell (Tom Cullen) and Glen (Chris New), who meet at a bar and spend an entire weekend before Glen flies to Portland for his education. The film’s narrative is mainly structured around questions of having a stable relationship as a gay man, which is addressed in the context of unexpectedly romantic weekend-long romance of the two. Pariah tells the story of Alike (Adepero Oduye), a young, black lesbian woman who feels constricted by her gender identification. The film illustrates how Alike feels like she is forced into the butch lesbian type and how she cannot express her sexuality to her parents. The Long Day Closes is about Bud (Leigh McCormack), a young boy in a working class family of Liverpool. The

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film’s focus on Bud’s (not yet realized) sexuality is positioned against his religious

upbringing and the bullying he goes through at school, which portrays an alienated image of the character. Lastly, J’ai tué ma mère is about Hubert (Xavier Dolan), a young gay man and his relationship with Chantalee (Anne Dorval). The film captures the troublesome relationship between the two characters and how Hubert’s sexuality enhances the alienation the two experience. When we look at these films, one can see the differences in the experiences each queer character goes through and how they can be analysed in relation to each filmmaker’s cultural and personal statuses as queer individuals. However, the paper will also analyse the similarities that these films have regarding each filmmaker’s style.

Naficy’s work on accented cinema has gained the attention of film scholars ever since his book's publication in 2001. One of the earliest scholars meditating on accented cinema is Patricia Pisters. In “Micropolitics of the Migrant Family in Accented Cinema: Love and Creativity in Empire”, Pisters uses accented cinema to ponder on the possibilities that accented cinema brings in terms of reformulating the discourse surrounding the migrant family. Pisters brings Hardt and Negri’s abstract ideas about the migrant body into dialogue with the concrete study of accented migratory films of Naficy. Hardt and Negri propose a system of control that governs the twenty-first century, which is called “Empire” (Pisters 198). Distinguishing it from imperialism, Hardt and Negri’s Empire is a “decentred and deterritorializing apparatus that manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies and plural exchanges through modulating networks” (qtd. In Pisters 198). Using Foucault’s society of discipline, Hardt and Negri argue that the Western bourgeois family and the dissolution of the non-Western family through migration are some of the methods for the creation of the society of control (Pisters 198). Pisters argues that in an attempt at coming to terms with their “lost heimat”, accented filmmakers turn their camera to the family, instead of averting it, and help emerge new narratives regarding the migrant body (Pisters 211). Pisters’ work makes use of Naficy's formulation in order to bring the highly conceptual ideas of Hardt and Negri and challenge them with accented cinema's focus on the family. Like Pisters, Subeshini Moodley also uses accented filmmaking for developing a postcolonial argument for a feminist

filmmaking practice. She uses two films by Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta, who are both immigrant filmmakers. Both Pisters' and Moodley’s works use accented cinema’s efforts to bring defining elements such as race, gender, history, geography, ethnicity and nation into foreground and use them as ways to challenge other restrictive or monolithic works.

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However, they do not engage with the conceptual framework critically. This paper differs from Moodley’s and Pister’s works in that the examples used in the context of accented cinema take a critical stance in addressing the notion of displacement.

Zinaid Meeran is a scholar who brings feminist film theory and accented filmmaking into conversation, but contrary to Moodley and Pisters, she uses multicultural feminist film theory in order to investigate “regressive trends in accented cinema” (9). She compares two films, Inch’Allah Dimanche (2001) and Lila dit Ça (2004), the latter of which have the textbook characteristics of accented cinema but is actually a feature film. Inch’Allah Dimanche, on the other hand, has a classical linear narrative and makes use of mainstream production techniques but manages to maintain the thematic concerns of accented filmmaking (Meeran 1). Meeran’s work is important in having a critical approach to accented filmmaking by using two feminist films and it illustrates how challenging the framework is helpful in addressing the ‘accent’ in films that are usually overlooked. In a similar attempt to that of Meeran, this paper’s aim is addressing queer films that would not be identified as having an accented style by referring to different scholarly works produced in queer theory or queer film studies.

Asuman Suner, a film scholar with articles published on identity politics in cinema, challenges the definition of accented filmmaking in her article titled “Outside in: ‘accented cinema’ at large”. Her argument is based on the claim that cinematic styles and themes

associated with accented filmmaking can also be identified in examples of national cinemas or films that are often grouped under the vague umbrella term of the world cinema (Suner 379). She chooses three films by Kurdish-Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi, Hong-Kong director Wong Kar-wai, and Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan as her case studies. Her paper

examines these directors, who are not exilic/diasporic in the traditional sense used by Naficy, yet their works reflect patterns of accented filmmaking. Suner’s aim is to re-think accented cinema in scope of the changing nature of national conditions and cultural systems at play (379). She states that defining accented filmmakers as artists who immigrated to the West reinforces the division between the “Western culture” and “other cultures”, and causes the other to be “defined on the basis of its difference” from the West (Suner 378). By illustrating how her case studies fit in the framework of accented filmmaking, she attempts to blur the limiting boundaries set by Naficy’s accented filmmaking and proposes to incorporate the rapidly changing social environments into the scope. Similarly, Will Higbee’s conception of

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the “cinema of transvergence” in “Beyond the (trans)national: towards a cinema of

transvergence in postcolonial and diasporic francophone cinema(s)” builds upon Suner’s line of thinking. Higbee proposes a new take regarding national and transnational cinemas. He proposes that the "cinema of transvergence" goes beyond the limits of the (trans)national cinema (80). By focusing on the works of Algerian-French filmmakers Merzak Allouache and Mahmoud Zemmouri, whose works often shuttle between French and Algerian filmmaking but never belongs to either group, his aim is to show that postcolonial and diasporic cinemas can function within the same nation and culture (Higbee 90). The questions that this paper will ask build on the criticisms made by Meeran, Suner and Higbee in their critical approach to the notion of displacement. This paper will show that displacement is an experience that leaves its marks on the language of the filmmaker, regardless of the specifics of the

displacement. However, rather than only criticizing the framework of accented cinema, the paper is more interested in how the conceptual framework of accented filmmaking can be used for addressing these marginal and independent queer films.

What this paper wants to do is meditate on the differences of queer discourses and their reflection in queer films by using accented cinema’s framework. On the other hand, discovering the accent in the queer cinema will also help discover the question of whether or not there are different cultural, personal and political conditions that should be taken into account. In the end, the paper will hopefully specify the queer cinema at large by addressing the cultural and personal nuances for each filmmaker.

In order to engage with these independent authorial queer films, the first chapter will first look at how scholarly work produced in queer studies can help understand the different mechanisms of the experience. The first chapter will look at Richard Dyer’s categorization of mainstream and radical queer cultures and will argue that using a radical queer culture as opposed to the mainstream helps analyse queer films that take the individual experience as the point of departure in film narrative and style. By using Judith Butler’s work on gender

performativity, the chapter will argue further that queer identity is a set of acts that is reinforced by stylized repetition of acts and also interpreted by each person performing the gender act. It will thus be argued that the films at hand can be looked at by using Butler’s framework in order to state the differences on queer filmic identities that is bound to cultural and personal mechanisms. The last section of the first chapter will refer to Judith

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argue further that the position of the queer filmmaker stuck in this formulation of the urban and the rural is also important in analysing a filmmaker’s film style.

In the second chapter, I will add to the analysis made already in the first chapter and I will inspect each film under the categories proposed by Naficy. The purpose of the second chapter is to incorporate a more comprehensive framework to look at how the experiences of queer filmmakers themselves can be addressed as part of an analysis. The categories selected from Naficy’s book are important in addressing the effect of filmmaker’s displacement in the film’s narrative, style and production. Therefore, the second chapter will illustrate how each queer film interpret displacement in its own terms but still manage to leave its mark on the style of the film. Therefore, queer films will be argued in their similarity to accented cinema but it will also be discussed that queer films differ from accented films in engaging with the experience of displacement critically.

The conclusion reviews then reviews these findings and examines the hypothesis given above. It will be argued that using the conceptual framework of accented cinema in order to theorize the existence of these queer films as an accented cinema is helpful in addressing the different sides of the queer identity and experience. These questions will be posed in recommendation for future research.

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1. Queer Films and Beyond

I love queer. Queer is a homosexual of either sex. It’s more convenient than saying ‘‘gays’’ which has to be qualified, or ‘‘lesbians and gay men.’’ It’s an extremely useful polemic term

because it is who we say we are, which is, ‘‘Fuck You.’’

Spike Pittsberg (qtd. in Smith 280)

In this paper, I have chosen to keep the focus on queer cinema because, compared to gay or lesbian cinema, it better describes the scope of the project. However, considering that the word ‘queer’ is used in different ways, a description of what I mean by ‘queer’ is necessary. While for some, the word ‘queer’ is just another hip word for describing homosexuals, it should be understood as inclusive of all non-straight sexualities in this context. According to queer theory, sexuality is not only composed of one’s sexual orientation, but it also

encompasses social, cultural and historical conditions that are part of these sexual orientations and/or behaviours (Benshoff and Griffin 1). In other words, the word ‘queer’ can be used for referring to any sexuality that is not defined as part of a normative heterosexual procreative sexuality.

Queer cinema, similarly, understands filmic sexualities as complex parts of human identity that cannot be viewed separately from cultural, historical and social contexts. Queer films can focus on one or more queer characters while exploring how fluidity of all sexualities is related to film production or reception (Benshoof and Griffin 2). On the other hand, these films might carry the queer authorial voice, which means that they also function as vessels to relay queer experiences of filmmakers. These films differ from early examples of queer characters in mainstream cinema, which often used stereotypical characters that only served the plot or were used for comedy effect.

Although mainstream cinema used queer characters ever since its early years, mainstream cinema turned its back on queer characters in film during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, unwilling to face a backlash with the growing hostility against queer people (Benshoff and Griffin 10). This is when an explosion of independent queer filmmaking began to emerge and filmmakers such as Todd Haynes and Gregg Araki established their careers. These films, some examples of which include My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Paris is Burning (1991) and Poison (1991), have more complex and multidimensional portrayal of queer characters.

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Moving away from the stereotypical portrayal of queer characters in Hollywood, these new queer films often explore sexuality in relation to other conditions such as gender, race, class and age (Benshoff and Griffin 11).

Named “New Queer Cinema” in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992, B. Ruby Rich traces this new queer filmmaking movement in her article with the same title. These films are different in the way they renegotiated subjectivities, implemented new genres and

re-imagined histories from a queer perspective (Rich 15). New Queer Cinema, in this sense, questions how inadequate categorizations such as ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ are by portraying the cultural human experience (Benshoff and Griffin 11). In a similar way, the films analysed in this chapter also place the queer human experience in an extensive set of cultural and personal factors. Like the films of New Queer Cinema, these films cross imaginary boundaries of filmmaking and draw from several filmic styles in order to establish their own queerness (Benshoff and Griffin 11).

This chapter will analyse this new movement of queer filmmaking based on their portrayal of human experiences. The purpose is to show that every queer filmic experience is multifaceted in its relationship with the conditions that lead to it. This chapter will look at the diversity of every queer filmic experience by inspecting how different sides of the queer experience are explored in filmic contexts.

The first section will look at how the queer experience is explored in terms of its association with the queer culture at large. The second section will look at how every queer experience is performed in a spatially and temporally conditioned mechanism and will look at other conditions forming the queer identity, which are illustrated with reflections from the films at hand. The third section will then look at the complex nature of queer identities in relation to the use of queer filmic spaces. Each section is meant to build on each other in order to dig deeper in various mechanisms at play behind the queer experience, and the argument is based on how these films reflect on these issues. In doing so, this chapter will investigate how queer films and filmic spaces, along with many other aspects of queer identities, are

convoluted in nature.

1.1 Queer Culture and Film

Richard Dyer states that, while culture does not necessarily have the agency to perform political work, it is a tool for carrying out a political agenda by way of producing cultural

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products that are part of the politics (Dyer 15). Regardless of its form and influence, we identify with the shared experience of culture through works of art, which eventually helps us express ideas and construct our identities (15). This role of the culture and its products take a special form when it comes to the "hidden" and "invisible" queers (15). Queer culture helps us find similar people, realize that we are not alone, form connections and ultimately identify ourselves as queer. Albeit questionable, popular culture with its Lady Gaga, the It Gets Better Project and RuPaul’s Drag Race might help the queer subject identify with the culture and shape their identity based on the discourse built by these products.

The fact that ‘queer’ is inclusive of all sexualities does not necessarily mean that queer experience and culture is one dimensional. According to Dyer, one being “traditional” and the other being “radical, queer culture can be separated into two groups regarding the realization of one’s identity (Dyer 16). While traditional queer culture is indicated by “learning and adopting” camp behaviour in order to be queer, radical queer culture is indicated by coming out into the already-existing queer movement and an already altered world (16). The

traditional queer culture, although necessary for claiming a general queer space, is largely restricted by its usage of a single homosexual identity (Dyer 22). Radical queer culture, on the other hand, sees individual experiences as being central to queer narratives (Dyer 23).

Therefore, radical queer culture arises as opposed to the compartmentalization of the mainstream queer culture, where the difference is accepted in a world of categorizations.

To Dyer, radical queer culture relied on the imagery of traditional queer culture for drawing its own imagery (Dyer 26). While traditional queer culture consisted of drawing a map of queer lifestyles; radical queer culture engaged in a conversation with it to differentiate its own language, and became “ironic, critical and celebratory” (26). In this sense, films discussed in this paper are part of the radical queer culture in its engagement with the queer experience. Unlike mainstream queer films portraying queer lives as part of an overarching and monolithic queer experience, queer films highlighting the singular nature of each experience provide us with a more comprehensive meditation on how people live their sexuality, while being distinctively homosexual (Dyer 28). These films, instead of making conclusions, ask questions without the need to have them unanswered, which runs against mainstream cinema’s tendency to generalize and conclude. Hence, compared to narratives of traditional queer culture, films of the radical queer culture have narratives that are ‘queer’ themselves. In Weekend by Andrew Haigh, for instance, the queer experience is discovered in

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the context of two British men having a weekend together before parting for good. Instead of exploring it as a purely sexual identity, the protagonist Russell’s (Tom Cullen) queerness is revealed as part of his identity as an orphan who was brought up by foster families. Therefore, his desire to settle down and have a family is interpreted in terms of Russell’s lack of family as a child. Mainstream queer cinema might have interpreted such a desire with the motivation to reflect that queer subjects can also form reproductive familial structures. However,

Weekend is able to take a critical stance by drawing from individual experience.

While radical queer culture, as defined by Dyer, provides a wider scope for alternative works of queer culture to be understood better, it falls short in its attempt at providing a wider scope of analysis for queer films in particular. Dyer’s definition of radical queer culture as opposed to mainstream queer culture is distinctive in radical queer culture’s attempt at locating queerness in individual experiences. However, Dyer’s formulation in taking

individual experience as the point of departure might gloss over multidimensional aspects of a queer identity, aspects such as race, culture, family, social status, etc.. Therefore, radical queer culture serves as the starting point for films that are interested in individual and contextual aspects of queer experiences, but it might need to be explored by using a more comprehensive framework that does not ground queer identities only in individual experiences.

1.2 Gender Performativity and Film

As mentioned before, queer studies, and likewise queer film studies, are focused on the fluidity of all sexualities and how every sexuality draws from several different factors such as culture, race, nation, social status, etc. In this context, Judith Butler’s contributions are

important in their influence on later scholarly works to come. Her article, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory” creates the foundation for her work on her conception of gender performativity, which is further developed in the book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1999).

Butler’s theory of gender performativity begins by stating that, with an aim to

represent women adequately, feminist theory created a language defining the category of the ‘woman’ (Gender Trouble 2). However, this kind of identification of the woman created a politics of representation where the criteria of being a woman must be met before one can be adequately represented (Gender Trouble 3). This attempt, naturally, comes together with the limitations drawn around gender definitions. Cinematic genders, intentionally or not, serve as

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reflections on these gender definitions. Mainstream cinema, in particular, draws heavily from a one-sided view of queer characters, where stereotypes such as the ‘gay best friend’ or the ‘butch lesbian’ are used frequently. Therefore, as explained by Butler, these attempts at representing a gender by way of categorization work against the fluidity of sexualities and limit representations of queer subjects and experiences.

In order to overcome the hurdle of categorization, Butler offers that gender is not a “stable identity” from which performances spring, but it is rather an identity embedded in time and realized through a “stylized repetition of acts” (“Performative Acts” 519, emphasis in original). In other words, gender is fluid in its essence and repetitive performance of associated acts grounds the gender and transforms it into an entity that forms an influential part of one’s identity.

Butler arrives at this conclusion with a critique of feminist theory’s phenomenological approach to gender. Phenomenology places one’s subjective experience in the context of a reciprocal relationship with surrounding political and cultural conditions (“Performative Acts” 522). This is to say that, feminist theory has tried to comprehend how political and cultural structures are reinforced through individual acts and how these acts can be understood as part of structures surrounding these acts (“Performative Acts” 522). Applied to queer films, it can be said that experiences of queer characters are shaped by their political and cultural contexts, but these filmic experiences are also understood in relation to the contexts they are embedded in. However, defending that individual acts have a “unilateral” or “unmediated” relationship with oppressive conditions surrounding gender and sexuality is limited, and this approach runs the risk of only addressing the indirect result of such conditions (“Performative Acts” 525). In a similar way, understanding the queer filmic identity in an unmediated, cause-effect relationship with the surrounding heteronormative context would be limited in its

understatement of the filmic representation of transforming and transformative sociopolitical contexts.

The transforming and transformative nature of the socio-political contexts in relation to gender can be explained further with an example from Zenne Dancer. In one of the opening scenes, while the mise-en-scène is filled with colourful drag costumes, the film emphasizes Ahmet’s reaction, who seems to be uncomfortable with Can’s flamboyant attitude (Figure 1). After mocking Can, he points at a Turkish bear calendar on the wall, stating that he is also a bear. As can be seen from the still in Figure 1, bear culture in Turkey is different in its

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interpretation of the Western bear culture within the context of Turkish bath/Seraglio themes. This scene serves as a reflection on how social and political systems surrounding sexuality are transformed in accordance with the culture in question, and how personal acts are shaped around these contextual differences as well (“Performative Acts” 525).

Figure 1. Ahmet in the dressing room of Can, and Turkish bear calendar in Zenne Dancer

In order to defuse the risks that come with a phenomenological gender acts interpretation of the feminist theory, Butler provides an understanding of gender acts in a “theatrical” sense (“Performative Acts” 525). Similar to the feminist theory, Butler’s interpretation of

theatrically-based gender acts also argues a less individual view of gender acts, while at the same time putting less emphasis on phenomenology (“Performative Acts” 525). Just like a script that survives its actors, a gender act also survives its performer, yet it is also interpreted and individualized to some degree by each performer (“Performative Acts” 526). Applied to cinema, queer films might serve as a reflection on how being queer is a theatrical

performance, which needs an individual actor to rehearse and repeat it in order for the act to become reality once again (“Performative Acts” 526). Adapted to the case of Zenne Dancer, Butler’s theatrically-based gender acts can be used to state that the film emphasizes Ahmet’s performance of the ‘masculine’ gay man with his bodily movements, gestures and the stylization of his body, which are repeated in a continuous basis. Can, on the other hand, realizes the performance of a ‘feminine’ gay man through his belly dance, his choice of clothing and his way of speaking.

The film emphasizes the fact that the actors are already on stage as part of their performances. Just like a script, gendered body acts are interpreted and acted differently by each actor in their culturally different context (“Performative Acts” 526). In this way, the film emphasizes the gendered act Ahmet plays as the ‘masculine’ gay man within the cultural

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restrictions that comes from his Kurdish heritage and conservative, rural background in southeastern Turkey. Similarly, Can is portrayed as playing his gendered body act within the confines of the urban and western background he comes from. The film thus underlines the fact that each performance has as much a complex relationship with space as with culture. Although Ahmet lives in Istanbul and is part of the gay culture, he is still bound to his southeastern roots and home via his family and culture. As opposed to mainstream queer films’ tendency to show urban life as queer and embracing, Zenne Dancer shows the troublesome distinction made between the urban and the rural, and how both of them are estranging for Ahmet. The following section will expand further on how these films address the troubling urban-rural distinction made in filmic discourses.

1.3 Queer and the Rural

In her book In a Queer Time and Space (2005), queer theorist Judith Halberstam uses the story of Brandon Teena, an American trans man who was raped and murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska, for her meditation on the distinction between urban and rural spaces in relation to queerness. She states that most of the theories produced on homosexuality in the last century presume that queer culture has an intimate relationship with urban geographies, and concludes that, in rural spaces, individuals with non-normative sexualities can easily be detected and punished for it (Halberstam 35). This formulation, which resonates to some degree in many cultural and political discourses, explains why urban spaces are viewed as environments where queer subjects can be anonymous and free. Similarly, narratives of many queer films are also structured around this assumption, and queer characters’ realization of their queerness is portrayed to be simultaneous with a need to move to an urban city. In this formulation, rural life is positioned as opposed to the queer urban life, and queer characters’ rural pasts are portrayed as places of claustrophobia and homophobia.

The films that are analysed in this paper take a critical look at this distinction of the urban and the rural. To give an example, Weekend takes place in Nottingham, not a typical ‘gay city’ as compared to the urban London. Andrew Haigh notes on his choice of location in an interview: “I knew that I didn’t want to shoot in London. I wanted to shoot in a city that was kind of a provincial nowhere town, so it wasn’t like a liberal Mecca, like Soho in London” (Bowen “Andrew Haigh Weekend”). Haigh’s choice of location shows the critical engagement with the queer subject as embedded in various spaces, where the urban does not

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necessarily welcome the queer and the rural does not necessarily stand for homophobia and violence.

Kath Weston’s article titled “Get Thee to a Big City: Sexual Imaginary and the Great Gay Migration” states that the stereotyped division of the rural and urban “located gay subjects in the city while putting their presence in the countryside under erasure” (Weston 262). This erasure of the queer presence in the rural space creates a pressure to move to an urban space, where the queer subject might experience estrangement and disappointment in the new alienating urban space (Halberstam 30). The imminent alienation in the urban space is concurrent with a pull created via the assumed queerness of urban spaces. In other words, because of this perceived opposition of homophobic rural and queer urban spaces, queer subject is in a forced immigration from the rural to the urban, never belonging to either in an in-between state.

Zenne Dancer is one such film with a storyline closely engaging with this perceived push-and-pull mechanism of urban and rural spaces. Inspired by their friendship with Ahmet Yildiz, a victim of homophobic murder committed by his father, filmmakers Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay reflect on this assumed difference between the Turkish ‘western’ and the ‘eastern’ in the film’s storyline. In mainstream cultural discourse, eastern and western parts of Turkey designate more than geographical places. While eastern parts of the country are assumed to be provincial with conservative cultures, western Turkey – Istanbul in particular – is associated with an urban, queer quality. This notion is critically analysed throughout the film via the protagonist Ahmet. The film focuses on how he is closely watched by his conservative and hostile family, even though he lives in Istanbul – the epitome of the urban and free queer space. Zenne Dancer is critical of how queer imaginary is not only about a dream to be free as a queer individual, but an urban space is needed for this dream to be realized (Weston 274). Such films question that the queer dream in relation to this distinction between the urban and the rural is symbolic, and this dream requires a different place of freedom that may not be provided at all (Halberstam 30).

Dee Rees’ Pariah further questions this distinction between queer and non-queer spaces by focusing on a single urban place: Brooklyn. By constantly changing clothing between school and home, Alike is performing the gender deemed appropriate by her family and the one perceived as suitable for her gender expression in the queer scene (Figure 2). Her attitude, body language and actual language also change along with her specific performance.

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While she is performing the lesbian African-American woman with a tomboy attitude among her friends, and talks in an urban slang, she acts like a middle-class, straight girl with her family. The film’s portrayal of two distinct performances in a single, urban and seemingly queer space leads to the question that there is more to the distinction that is constructed in an urban-rural relationship, one that includes many different conditions such as race, family, social status, sex, etc.

Figures 2. Alike before and after: Her two distinct gender performances in Pariah

As discussed by Halberstam, queer studies frequently offered an understanding of communities as an aggregated model of many individuals, rather than “as a complex

interactive model of space, embodiment, locality and desire” (45). As films like Pariah and Zenne Dancer illustrate, queer film studies also benefit from an interactive model of study including several different factors affecting filmic languages and discourses built around these languages.

The observations made in this chapter give rise to the thought that the queer experience and the queer identity is too complex to be argued with a framework devoid of multidimensionality. As the distinction made between mainstream and radical queer cultures illustrate, the films analysed in this paper avoid placing queer experience in a map of queer experiences and differentiate each queer filmic experience by drawing from individual experience. Judith Butler’s criticism of phenomenology and proposal of theatrically-based gender acts shows that, queer filmic experience cannot be analysed only in terms of individual experiences. Butler’s argument shows that queer acts are as much part of specific cultural contexts as it is appropriated, acted and repeated by each queer filmic character. Halberstam’s criticism of the assumed queerness of urban spaces show how it complicates the queer

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individual’s relationship with their rural background and how this is reflected in the filmic discourses analysed, which engage with this distinction critically.

Through the analysis of different cultural and philosophical thinking around queer film studies, this chapter illustrates that the queer experience on the screen is approached in a critical stance. These films engage with the queer identity by taking into account the various individual and cultural conditions that help shape the overall queer experience. However, experience of queer filmmakers and how this relates to their filmic language and production techniques might also help us look at these films more extensively. The next chapter will do this and examine how queer films can be examined in relation to the filmmaker.

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2. Queer Filmmaking as Accented Cinema

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift opened between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its

essential sadness can never be surmounted.

Edward Said (Said 357)

This quote from Edward Said, a Palestinian American scholar of postcolonialism and postmodernism, hits close to home for exilic, diasporic and postcolonial filmmakers. Hamid Naficy’s work on accented cinema argues that these filmmakers’ identities as displaced individuals have an influence on their filmic languages and film production processes they go through. This is similar to Halberstam’s argument on the distinction between urban and rural places and how this divide forces the queer subject on an exile to urban cities (30).

The assumed queerness of the urban life often forces the queer subject to move to an urban city, which creates a tension between the urban space and the rural past. Whether this takes place via coming out or not, the experience is simultaneous with a need to realize and act one’s own sexuality. The films analysed in this paper reflect on this tension between the urban and the rural, and locate the queer character in an interstitial position in this divide. The autobiographical qualities of these films reflect the interstitiality of queer filmmakers

themselves. The fact that these filmmakers still live in their homelands show the transnational quality of displacement influencing the film style. The purpose of this chapter is to look at the displacement that these filmmakers go through and how this experience transforms their films.

The first section looks at different components of the film style that accented films have and these components will be analysed in queer films. The second section looks at alternative modes of production that queer filmmakers use, which is a result of their interstitial positions. The third section analyses the references made to the notion of the

homeland and the host land and how it is bound to the time of the displacement in queer films. The fourth section looks at how queer characters go through a transformation process on the screen and how it mirrors the same experience queer filmmakers undergo. The fifth section looks at what devices queer films use in order to accentuate the division between the queer filmmaker and the homeland to further highlight the in-between state of the filmmaker.

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Guided by Naficy’s book on accented filmmaking, the purpose of this chapter is to show that queer films can be analysed within the framework of accented cinema and to illustrate that the notion of displacement is a complex mechanism.

2.1. Accented Style

In the introduction to his book, Naficy sets out his motivation for defining a corpus of accented cinema. He states that many independent exilic filmmakers – filmmakers such as Abid Med Hondo, Michel Khleifi and Mira Nair – who make films about the experience of exile and their homelands, are often categorized as national, Third World, Third Cinema, identity cinema or ethnic filmmakers (Naficy 19). Naficy argues that these categorizations often undermine the importance of the cultural and political conditions that create these films (19). In this way, accented cinema serves as a way to account for the complex, inconsistent and regular aspects of these films and illustrate the effect that displacement has on these filmmakers’ work. Similarly, queer films engaging with the politics and culture of a specific place in time are often categorized under the rubric of the national, Third World or queer cinema, and these categorizations often efface the varying degrees of complexities that these films have. Queer film studies are more interested in the diegetic aspects of a film than how queer filmmaker as a displaced subject influences film production and language. For this reason, queer film studies also need a more comprehensive framework, one that includes various aspects centred on the filmmaker’s own experiences as a queer subject.

Accented filmmakers have an affinity with the homeland and the host land to some degree, but the mechanisms of this relationship divides them into three categories. Exilic filmmakers constitute one of these categories, and it refers to filmmakers who have had to develop an authorial style under the restrictions imposed by their countries’ totalitarian regimes (Naficy 11). Those filmmakers who choose to remain in the site of struggle are in an internal exile, and filmmakers on an external exile free themselves from the oppressive regime of the homeland only to lose their voices in the highly competitive and polyphonic global film market (11). This trauma and rupture from the homeland feeds exilic filmmakers’ language, where they remain to be engaged with both old and new lands, while never fully belonging to either (Naficy 12). Although diasporic filmmakers also have different identities before and after the trauma of the rupture from their homelands, diasporic identities are collectively defined (Naficy 14). In other words, diasporic filmmakers differ from exilic

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filmmakers in their involvement with not only the homeland, but also with other displaced subjects with the same roots. This relationship with compatriot communities inform their work, which often stress “multiplicity and addition” as opposed to the “binarism and

subtraction” of exilic filmmakers (Naficy 14-15). As a third category, postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmakers differ from diasporic and exilic filmmakers in their emphasis on “ethnic and racial” identities within the host country (Naficy 15). This means that, while exilic and diasporic films engage with “there and then” in the homeland, postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmakers engage with the life “here and now” in the country they reside (15).

Queer filmmakers are often located in the interstices of these three groups of accented identities. The filmmakers explored in this paper all reside in their homelands, which might lead to their categorization as internal exilic filmmakers. Further, in oppressive and

homophobic states and cultures, the politics of the internal exile might be more visible in the filmic discourses serving the queer movement for freedom. However, the division between the urban and the rural spaces, and the move to the urban city for a relatively free life create a geographically internal exile that nevertheless carries the qualities of external exile.

Deterritorialized within the same homeland, these filmmakers exist in the liminalities between the urban present and the rural past, and their films are informed by this nostalgic relationship with the past and the troubles experienced in the present urban. Andrew Gorman-Murray states that moving out of the parental home to come out does not necessarily require a

migration of great distances, as leaving home for the realization of the queer identity might be just as important for queer subjects (117). On the other hand, queers filmmakers also engage with the queer communities in these urban spaces. By coming together in queer urban spaces, the connection with the queer compatriot community in the big city takes on the politics of diasporic communities. Lastly, although being queer does not reflect bloodline relations like that of postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmakers (such as African-American, Latino-American or Asian-Latino-American), queer films represent an “irrevocably split identity” and a stasis between two opposing cultures (Naficy 16). These two cultures might represent

heteronormative and queer cultures, but they might also be related to an ethnic identity that is much more heteronormative than the dominating culture (which is the case in Zenne Dancer). As stated by Naficy, diaspora, exile and ethnicity are not stable and they might turn into one another or merge with each other under certain circumstances (17). By carrying certain

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qualities of three different identities, queer filmmakers might represent exilic, diasporic and ethnic identities at the same time.

Naficy states that the accented style is a group style, which means that it has a consistent use of film techniques that is shared by several filmmakers (20). In this sense, accented style brings together a group of filmmakers who share certain qualities stemming from the experience of displacement and deterritorialization (21). This experience influences one side of the accented style, and another component of accented style is constituted by the exilic and diasporic traditions that existed before these filmmakers (Naficy 22). Similarly, queer filmmakers also derive from both their own experiences as displaced subjects and queer filmmaking traditions that existed before them.

Naficy states that the accented style is not a fully established style, but rather an emergent category that is a set of “undeniable personal and social” experiences (26). The structure of accented filmmaking is located in the filmmaker’s own experiences of

displacement, named “accented structure of feeling”, which include dysphoria and euphoria at the same time (26-27). Particularly, exilic films are driven by the pull of the homeland, which is signified as too sacred a place to be played with (Naficy 27). The underlined importance of the homeland brings with it a sadness which is the result of being apart from it; sad and alienated people are central to accented films for this reason. When we look at Zenne

Dancer’s storyline, for example, we see the friendship of three alienated characters: Daniel, a German photo-journalist scarred by his last photography project in the Middle East, Can, a male belly dancer trying to avoid serving in the military and Ahmet, a Kurdish, southeastern university student living in Istanbul. Ahmet emerges as a predominantly sad and alienated queer character in the film. The film focuses on the tensions that the character goes through: although he does not want to go back home, he is still attached to it via his family. Zenne Dancer illustrates the compelling pull of the homeland, which is highlighted with a sense of terminal loss. According to Edward Said, although exilic character’s life is filled with certain glorious moments, these are only efforts in order to “overcome the crippling sorrow of

estrangement”. The film also emphasizes these moments in the character’s life, some of which is his romance with Daniel, and preparations to leave Turkey for good.

Naficy states that the accented individual’s body is often put into doubt, which is a result of the exile that is coupled with hostility in the new country (28). This leads to an elevation of sensations, which often help to evoke flashes of memories and reinforce

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connections with the homeland (Naficy 28). The juxtaposition of multiple places and nonlinear narrative structure constitute the “tactile optics” of accented films, which is

motivated by the multiple losses that the characters go through (Naficy 28-29). In the opening sequence of Pariah, to give an example, we see an example of these distracted tactile optics. As can be seen in Figure 3, the camera cuts from Alike sitting uncomfortably at a lesbian bar, to a shot of a woman singing, to another shot of drinks, and finally establishes its gaze on Alike. The tactile optics in this scene reminds Alike of her displacement in the queer scene because of her expected gender performance as the butch lesbian, and her imminent loss that results from her parents’ reaction to her sexuality. Therefore, accented style in Pariah offers an “ocular” and “ideological” perspective on displacement (Naficy 30). While ideological is revealed via accented structures of feeling, ocular is explored via the tactile optics.

Figure 3. Use of tactile optics in Pariah

Naficy traces the roots of accented cinema to Third Cinema, which is a Latin-American cinema of liberation that draws upon Italian neorealist film aesthetics and a political criticism of oppression (30). Teshome H. Gabriel elaborates further on this tradition of filmmaking and states that Third Cinema films are made mainly in Third World countries, but they can be made anywhere and by anyone as long as they carry their engagement with opposition and liberation (2-3). Accented films are not as politically engaged as Third Cinema films because

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of their close relationship with individual histories, ethnicities, nationalities and deterritorialization rather than the people, but they still deal with authoritarianism and

oppression to some degree (Naficy 30-31). One thing that is shared by both the Third Cinema and accented cinema is the attempt to portray a fetishized picture of the homeland; and the portrayal of the fetishized homeland precedes the time of displacement (Naficy 31). To give an example, Terence Davies’ film The Long Day Closes is an account of the filmmaker’s childhood in a lower middle class neighbourhood of Liverpool in the mid-1950s. Although the diegetic character Bud is bullied at school and is agonized by his sexuality, the film’s portrayal of his family and neighbourhood is a blissful one. The scene in Figure 4 is one of these moments, where the camera captures a long shot of Bud’s mother and siblings in a mise-en-scène à la The Last Supper. The scene gives clues to the spectator regarding Bud’s

religious attachments and his constructed portrayal of the home. Hence The Long Day Closes shows the “historically conscious, politically engaged, critically aware, generally hybridized and artisanally produced” qualities of queer films (31).

Figure 4. Bud’s Christmas dinner in The Long Day Closes

As accented filmmakers are individuals transplanted in Western countries by separation from their Eastern homelands, the consciousness of the border emerges in accented films (Naficy 31). The effect of the border stands for the blurred identity, vagueness and chaos (31). In J'ai

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tué ma mère, the protagonist Hubert stands at one such border: he is overly attached to his mother but hates her at the same time, he lives his sexuality freely, yet without the knowledge of his mother. Naficy states that as a result of the trauma caused by the chaos of the border, accented films are characterized by “amphibolic characters” whom Naficy calls “shifters” (32). Border shifters are defined by multiple, conflicted identities and perspectives (32). Hubert is also characterized by his identity as a son and as a queer subject, and these identities are in conflict because of his mother’s inherent homophobia. There are scenes, such as the one in Figure 5, where Hubert’s and his mother’s relationship mechanisms change in a moment’s notice from love to hate against each other. Torn between his two identities, Hubert shifts back and forth between two sides of a metaphoric border, which highlights his accented identity.

Figure 5. Hubert with his mother in two following sequences in J'ai tué ma mère

Accented cinema is based on a poststructuralist view of authorship, which sees authors as “fictions within their texts who reveal themselves only in the act of spectating” (Naficy 33). This is to say that, instead of putting the reader in the position of an object, poststructuralism positions the reader as an active agent in bringing together the traces of the author in a text. Roland Barthes explains this by saying that in order to for the authorial voice be manifested, the author needs to disappear (148). According to this formulation, putting both the author and the spectator/reader in a subject position suggests that the spectator’s interpretation of the text might not necessarily equal the actual author creating the text (Naficy 34). If we apply to Weekend by Andrew Haigh or Zenne Dancer by Caner Alper and Mehmet Binay, the stories told do not equal the creators of the text. In the case of Weekend, spectators are provided with the filmic text about a gay man from Nottingham who works as a lifeguard; and Zenne

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over this by putting “the locatedness and the historicity of the authors back into authorship” (Naficy 34). This is to say that, accented filmmakers should not only be seen as expressive authors with distinctive voices, but their identities as displaced subjects should also be seen as part of the formulation. Therefore, accented filmmakers inhabit their texts in various forms, which positions them in an interstitial position in the self-inscription they apply to their filmic texts as well (Naficy 35).

Even though each queer film discussed here have varying degrees of self-inscription, they are not only motivated by their own cinematic languages, but also each queer

filmmaker’s own experiences as displaced subjects1_{. Influenced by the double consciousness} of being queer and being displaced, these authorial filmmakers emphasize exile as a subject of their films, but they also signify upon the exile as an emotional experience that leaves a mark on their very identity (Naficy 22). The next section will look at how accented filmmakers and queer filmmakers similarly engage with the production process of their films.

2.2. Mode of Production

The interstitiality of accented cinema reflects itself in production, distribution and

consumption methods as much as it does in the accented style. Naficy explains that cinema’s mode of production, as is the case with any creative industry, is dictated by the mainstream trends in production and consumption (40). Cinema, as one such product, is generally produced with the aim of consumption, therefore the spectator’s behavior has an influence over how these films are produced and how they are marketed. For this reason, while

mainstream cinema is mainly produced for consumption by a worldwide audience, art-house cinema is produced for a niche market, which limits and affects production methods in return.

Before the advance of the free market, Hollywood depended on the studio system, where films were controlled centrally, from production to their consumption. Financial and sociopolitical shifts around the world gave way to a new mode of production, which is more interested in the global marketing, distribution of products and services rather than the production of the film itself (Naficy 41). Films started to become “intertextual products”, “franchises” or “software” that acted more like brands or products and less like creative works

1_{Dolan’s J'ai tué ma mère probably have the highest degree of autobiographical self-inscription among the}

selection. He states in an interview that the film’s storyline was based on his relationship with his mother and that it was a cathartic experience for him (Cinémotions, “Entretien avec Xavier Dolan, réalisateur de 'J'ai tué ma mère').

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(41). In other words, films have turned into massive cultural products with on-going post-production efforts to increase the profit margin. Global premieres, actors/actresses with astronomical fees, DVD releases and various related merchandise now constitute an integral part of the film industry. Accented filmmaking is not driven by this market-oriented approach to film production; in fact, Naficy defines accented filmmaking by its defiance of the global market (41). Queer films are also similar to accented filmmaking in this sense: although mainstream queer cinema has gained traction in the global film industry, most queer films still rely on alternative modes of production and consumption.

Accented form of production can best be described as an “interstitial” alternative mode; that is, compared to dominant modes of production, its particularity emerges but it also co-exists with the dominant mode of production (Naficy 43). To give an example, filmmaker Dee Rees used festivals to attract attention and possible investors for Pariah. Originally written as a graduation project, Rees decided to turn it into a short film in order to set the style of the film and also showcase her work to future investors of her feature film (Davis,

“Writer/Director Dee Rees Talks Pariah, Bolo, Large Print, and HBO TV Series with Viola Davis”). With a budget of under 500,000 dollars, Dee Rees completed Pariah in 19 days in a converted funeral home in Brooklyn (Zack, “‘Pariah’ director Dee Rees confronts

disapproval”). After its first premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the film was picked up by Focus Features, NBC’s art-house films division (Zack, “‘Pariah’ director Dee Rees confronts disapproval”). Dee Rees’ method is common among queer filmmakers, who both use mainstream channels of distribution, but also use alternative methods of production and an active approach in raising funds to produce their works.

The dominant mode of production may influence the alternative production methods; however, the dominant production modes need alternative modes in order to stay relevant and dominant (43). The alternative mode of production utilized by accented filmmaking is placed in relation to the postindustrial cinema modes described by Naficy; while they are not driven by profit, they are still made possible with the capital, which takes the form of several

different public and private funds (43). To give an example, in order to fund J'ai tué ma mère, Xavier Dolan used his own savings of 150,000 dollars that he earned as a child actor

(Historica Canada). When he ran out of his fund halfway through the film and the production company dropped the project, he met a veteran production manager, who secured him funds through the Quebec cultural development corporation SODEC (Historica Canada). As is the

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case with Dolan, scarcity of public funds might require the accented filmmaker to invest in their films financially, which shows that accented cinema is driven by money, but not defined by its existence, or lack thereof.

The accented mode of production is a part of the “minor literature” formulated by Deleuze and Guattari: the limitation of the accented individual, the amateurishness and the imperfection are all reflected in the production methods (Naficy 45). The imperfection and the contradictory nature of these films lead to limitations in the funds and the commercial space provided for these films (45). For this, accented filmmakers’ role in these films are

“multifunctional” because these filmmakers often have to juggle different roles in the production, and they are “integrated” because accented filmmaking requires filmmakers to contribute to the financing and exhibition of their films (Naficy 46). Similarly, queer filmmakers also form a part of this minor literature, where alternative modes of production and post-production are integral to the entire process of filmmaking. To give an example, Andrew Haigh’s film Weekend was produced with only 120,000 pounds in 15 days (Clare 786). But the budget limitation reportedly enabled him to “strip the mechanics of filmmaking” to capture the intimacy between the two main characters (Bowen “Andrew Haigh Weekend”). For this, he used handheld cameras and used real settings with no extras (Bowen “Andrew Haigh Weekend”). Therefore, budget limitations also define the techniques used in the film, some of which are amateurishness, imperfection and a small crew (Naficy 45). From this perspective, the amount of the original budget for The Long Day Closes (1,750,000 pounds) does not sound too low for an independent queer film (Beckman, “The Long Day Closes”). However, a studio replicating Davies’ childhood Liverpool had to be created, and for this reason Davies had to leave out some camera effects in order to produce the film with his available budget (Beckman, “The Long Day Closes”). Therefore, even Davies’ relatively high budget is defined by the limitations that ultimately influences the techniques and aesthetics that the filmmaker can make use of.

The reason that these filmmakers encounter budget limitations is partly because accented and queer filmmakers occupy a paradoxical place in the film industry, and they produce “contradictory, unstable, usually short-lived” films (James 18). However, this does not necessarily mean that queer filmmakers and accented filmmakers exist on the peripheries of the film industry (Naficy 46). These filmmakers benefit both from a global audience and a local one at the same time. They use their interstitial identities to form a solidarity resulting

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from their designated differences, while opposing a homogenous ‘we’ at the same time (Bhabha 270). Just as the shifter characters in their filmic border writings, accented and queer filmmakers switch between their multiple identities in order to secure more funding and audience. To give an example, Zenne Dancer was shot with an estimated budget of around 1,000,000 euros, with support from the Human Rights Programme of the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Similar to accented filmmakers accessing international funds via their interstitial nationalities and cultures, queer filmmakers – especially in cultures with more visible censorship and homophobia – often receive funding from international pro-LGBT institutions and public funds.

The queer culture and queer films are located at the “intersection of local and global”, and queer filmmakers, like accented filmmakers, mediate between these contradictory

identities (Naficy 46). For this reason, interstitiality and multiplicity are not only a way for the filmmakers to use various resources in film financing, but these characteristics can also be identified in terms of various roles they play in the production of a film. A clear example would be Xavier Dolan, who juggles several roles as the director, producer, actor and the costume designer in his film J'ai tué ma mère. Other filmmakers mentioned here are also interstitially located in the film production process: Rees, Binay and Alper, Haigh and Davies all wrote and directed their films. While this multiplicity of roles enables the queer and the accented filmmaker to overcome financial obstacles in order to produce their films, it also provides the filmmaker with a tighter control over the film. By taking on several different roles in the film, queer filmmakers act as accented filmmakers in order to shape its aesthetics and become its author (Naficy 49).

As can be seen with filmmakers presented above, most independent queer filmmakers need to perform several roles, consult low-budget shooting techniques, benefit from different funds and be an active agent in the entire production process in order to reduce costs. The above illustrations show how queer filmmakers often work with very low budgets, and also work around several obstacles to produce authorial works that are not only motivated by their identities as displaced subjects, but also by what kind of limitations the film industry impose on these filmmakers. The next section will inspect how the experience of displacement and deterritorialization inform references to homeland and host land in queer filmmakers’ films.

Re-Imagining Queer Cinema: Finding the Accent in Queer FIlmmaking