Queer Cinema : From cross-dressing to transgender films

The article offers a general view on queer in cinema, focusing on 1990s, and the New Queer Cinema, and selected transgender films. It addresses the issue of both gender and sexuality, in terms of queer theory and queer film studies. There is a short introduction to the history of representation of queer identity in cinema, including classical and genre films. Meanwhile it is a kind of popularization of film analysis from the queer perspective, as the one represented by Alexander Doty. The next part of the article examine the tradition of recent queer cinema, including The New Queer Cinema and films of individual authors. It is shown that both in terms of its aesthetics and narration, queer cinema tends to re-imagine and re-create ways of representations, against the conventional fixed models of masculine and feminine, dictated by dominant orders and ideology. There are also two separate parts dedicated to the phenomena of cross-dressing, and to transgender on screen. Concluding, the article presents different aspects of the issue of queer cinema, exposing some of its common features, such as: an ironic self-awareness associated with post-modern representation; new conceptualization of self as transgender, transsexual, drag; crossings and transgressing of gender and/or sex boundaries, whether temporary or permanent, on the level of representation or anatomically.