Canadian activist and academic Thomas Waugh once wrote, ‘if films are to be instrumental in the process of change, they must be made not only about people directly implicated in change but with and for those people as well’. Barbara Creed’s 1975 film, Homosexuality: A Film for Discussion, does precisely that.
Here, in her film, everyone has a voice – and it is a delight to see so many gay Melburnians happily allowing themselves to be explicitly recorded on camera, no mean feat considering sodomy laws were not repealed in Victoria until 1981, aversion therapy was rampant, and the threat of being outed could mean job loss or worse. Creed, now a widely published author and Screen Studies Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne, was a founding member of the early 1970s Melbourne gay liberation movement and co-founder of the Melbourne Women’s Filmmaking Group.
