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The Queer Biopic in the AIDS Era
by Laura Stamm
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Book Presentation:
• Renews our understanding of New Queer Cinema by addressing queer life films as biopics
• Reinterprets the work of canonical filmmakers like Derek Jarman, Barbara Hammer, Todd Haynes, and John Greyson
• Returns to the historical moment of the AIDS crisis to synthetically think through queer filmmakers' recourse to biography
The Queer Biopic in the AIDS Era offers a new account of the AIDS crisis and the emergence of New Queer Cinema. Author Laura Stamm asks why queer filmmakers repeatedly produced biographical films of queer individuals living and dead throughout the years surrounding the AIDS crisis. Queer filmmakers' engagement with the biopic evokes the genre's history of building life through the portrayal of lives worthy of admiration and emulation but it also points to another biopic history; that of representing lives damaged. By portraying lives damaged by inconceivable loss, queer filmmakers challenge the illusion of a coherent self presumably reinforced by the biopic genre and in doing so, their films open the potential for new means of connection and relationality. The Queer Biopic in the Aids Era features fresh readings of the cinema of Derek Jarman, John Greyson, Todd Haynes, Barbara Hammer, and Tom Kalin. By calling for a reappraisal of the queer biopic, this book also calls for a reappraisal of New Queer-Cinema's legacy and its influence of contemporary queer film.
As a whole, this book pays particular attention to the biopic's queer resonances, opening up its historical connections to projects of education, public health, and social hygiene, along with the production of a shared history and national identity.
About the Author:
Laura Stamm, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, University of Rochester Medical Center Laura Stamm is Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at University of Rochester Medical Center.
Press Reviews:
"This illuminating book addresses the intersection of the biopic with queer concerns and productively expands our understanding of both. Tracing the emergence of the queer biopic, Stamm considers how it ultimately offers moments of possibility taken up by queer filmmakers to rewrite themselves into history by engaging audiences' fascination with others. Adopting a provocative range of approaches from the psychoanalytic and biomedical to the historical and archival, Stamm offers a generative, lively discussion on the queer biopic's simultaneous preservation and reimagination of queer history." - Sarah Keller, Associate Professor of Art and Cinema Studies at University of Massachusetts Boston and author of Barbara Hammer: Pushing Out of the Frame
"Stamm convincingly demonstrates the deep intersection of queer film and biographical narratives, significantly revising our previous understanding of both. We didn't know how long we had been waiting for this book, and now here it is." - Corey K. Creekmur, Associate Professor of Film Studies and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa
"The Queer Biopic in the AIDS Era highlights the important contribution of the New Queer Cinema filmmakers to the genre; this study, by extension, also offers a new lens by which to perceive the project of those filmmakers." - Eric Hughes, European Journal of American Studies
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
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