Forbidden love: the unashamed stories of lesbian lives

Duration: 85

Year Published: 1992

Creator: Women Make Movies

Format: 16mm

Color: Color & B&W

Sound: sound

Description: Against a backdrop of suggestive bookcovers from lesbian pulp novels, tabloid headlines, archival photographs and film clips, ten Canadian women paint a portrait of lesbian sexuality and survival during the 1950's and 60's when lesbians were consigned to a twilight world of silence and isolation. Recounting stories of nascent awareness concerning sexual identity and first loves, the participants also describe the dangerous search for community in the beer parlors and bars of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal that tolerated openly gay women. Accenting the women's reminiscences is a drama drawn from the 50's lesbian trash novels centering on Laura, a young lesbian who arrives in the big city and is seduced by Mitch, a woman she meets in a gay bar. Author Ann Bannon dissects the conventions of the lesbian novel and contrasts the ways lesbians were fictionalized with their actual experiences. Her comments and those of her lesbian sisters contribute another fragment to gay and lesbian history.