Abstract

There is something peculiarly queer about theory. It is an erotically sentient enterprise because it at once reaches for the abstract and the material. Not unlike the cinema, theory renders the mobile, the malleable, and the inexpressible. A philosophy of queer film, therefore, involves desire. How do we account for its historical unfolding? What filmmakers and critics opened the cinema to a queer experience? The makers and writers discussed below, deliver a theory of “queer” cinema that involves experimentation, “imaging,” and critical engagement with ideology and bodies. In short, it involves movement. Like the queer philosophy it evokes for filmmakers and critics alike, the cinema transforms time and space—aesthetically, politically, and culturally.