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The first lesbian film profiled in the documentary is Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman's je, tu, il, elle (1974), which featured an epic 10-minute oral sex scene between two women having an affair. But rather than focusing on the story of these two women, Fabulous! looks only at the torrid black and white sex scene and breezes right along to a discussion of Stonewall's impact on queer cinema. Akerman, who is still making movies today, wasn't interviewed for the documentary, despite the fact that her film was touted as the true beginning of lesbian cinema.

It's odd that Akerman's work, a foreign language art film, would be highlighted, as the primogenitor of a film movement, when few other foreign films even get a mention. Movies like Yossi & Jagger, Bent, Amour de Femme, Aimee & Jaguar and newer release Unveiled, are conspicuously absent from the mix, despite the fact that they go beyond the exhausted coming out story or simple romantic comedy.

Foreign films like Ma Vie En Rose, Beautiful Boxer and the campy Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which delve into transgender issues, are completely absent from the documentary, as are most American films that touch on the subject like TransAmerica. Harry Dodge and Silas Howard's By Hook or By Crook, the gender-bending, trans-positive 2001 feature, does get some play in the documentary, but neither Dodge nor Howard were interviewed for the show.

Fabulous! does spend a good deal of time on drag, asserting that the Rocky Horror Picture Show was a pivotal film in the LGBT community because it allowed gay people a venue in which to express themselves. Randy Barbato, producer of the Sundance Channel's serial documentary TransGeneration, says “Drag set our people free.” While it's safe to say that drag probably didn't set lesbians free, it is true that drag films and live shows made homosexuality somewhat more palatable for a segment of straight America.

The documentary returns to lesbian films with the introduction of Personal Best and Desert Hearts, which was the first lesbian-made movie with a lesbian narrative theme to receive a wide cinematic release. Filmmaker Donna Deitch describes that is was the desire to see her own story on screen that pushed her to make the 1985 classic. “I felt the love story should be a real love story that would reflect our experience of what a love story is,” Deitch says. She goes on to say that agents were refusing auditions for the film left and right because no Hollywood actresses wanted to be associated with a lesbian movie.

In 1991, Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning and Todd Haynes' Poison, garnered top honors at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to pave the way for what B. Ruby Rich coined “new queer cinema.” These two films ushered in a new era of queer cinema where young gay and lesbian filmmakers pushed each other to take risks and make movies that truly reflected the queer experience in America. Lesbian director Rose Troche, whose 1994 film Go Fish transcended the common themes of coming out or forbidden love, discusses the desire to make films “by, for and about” lesbians.

In one broad stroke, Fabulous! trumpets mid-to-late 1990s movies like The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love, All Over Me and The Watermelon Woman, as hallmarks of lesbian film, but then moves briskly into an exploration of movies like Bound and Heavenly Creatures--“lesbian” movies made by straight men. The documentary is nearly half over before there is a legitimate discussion of contributions made by lesbian filmmakers to queer cinema.

But in spite of its shortcomings, Fabulous! is a solid primer of queer cinema with meaningful discussions about how LGBT films have progressed over the years and where these films are going. You get the sense that gay filmmakers are still grappling with how best to tell the LGBT story, but they're gaining momentum with every film and their work provides a more complete reflection of queer life than ever before.

Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema premieres on
the Independent Film Channel (IFC) Sunday, July 16 at 10 pm ET

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