It’s more than a matter of ‘I Will Survive’: the films, documentaries, newsreels and series in the NFSA collection remind us how the LGBTQIA+ community have challenged and changed Australian attitudes with dignity and an undefeatable dose of queer joy.
This feature is part of the LGBTQIA+ Pride Collection at the NFSA.
To walk Sydney during Pride Month is to see rainbow flags fluttering in the streets, corporate branding scurrying to incorporate ‘yaaas’ into their slogans, and, if we’re talking 2023, to hear another hit from queer icon Kylie – ‘Padam, Padam’ – pulsing through the airwaves. Particularly for those who weren’t alive to witness the activism of the late ‘70s, living amongst these public displays of pride and inclusivity can make it easy at times to forget how far Australia has come. A peek into the NFSA collection is a chance to see that history.
Some of the earliest records in the LGBTQIA+ Collection are home movies from Kenneth (Ken) Garrahy (1933–2021) – an avid home movie enthusiast who documented his life in Sydney and overseas during the 1960s and 1970s. These 43 Super8 films are unique because, unlike other home movies of the time, Ken captured the joy and community within gay social life in Sydney during a time when homosexual acts between men were illegal in NSW, and many spaces were unsafe for people to live authentic lives.
The oppression of the time is acutely felt when you veer away from personal collections and dig into the newsreels and documentaries that focus on the gay rights marches of 1978. A clip from the restored documentary Witches and Faggots, Dykes and Poofers highlights the harrowing ordeal protestors endured following the police attacks and arrests during the first Mardi Gras parade in June 1978.
But the ‘78ers’ lit a fuse. Guest contributor Diane Minnis, a co-chair of First Mardi Gras Inc., recalls her involvement in the 'Drop the Charges' campaign that followed – and how a peaceful march the following year led the way for the spectacular annual celebration we all know today.
News file footage of gay rights protests in Sydney. Eyewitness News, 27 August 1978. Courtesy: Ten Network. NFSA title: 616493
Blazing the way ahead of today’s queer pop personalities like G Flip, Troye Sivan, and Electric Fields were the feminist rockers of the 1970s – acts like the Lavender Blues and Stray Dags. Nikki Mortier from the Lavender Blues told Queer Music History in March 2002: ‘Women were starved in those days for anything because, as far as I know, we were the first Australian lesbian group to put out an album. So we were sort of the flavour of the month in the lesbian community for a couple of years.’
Music – and radio – has been a lifeline for people in isolated times. Writer and broadcaster Benjamin Law saw radio’s impact while volunteering on Brisbane’s 4ZZZ FM program Queer Radio when he was 17 years old. ‘The host, John Frame, would tell me about listeners who would drive for ages just so they could get reception to queer radio, to actually hear through the airwaves other queer people sharing their stories, us playing queer music’, he said on Episode 5 of the NFSA podcast Who Listens to the Radio?
Kylie Minogue, also long-praised as a gay icon, spoke to Molly Meldrum in 2006 about the honour, saying, ‘they've been with me through thick and thin'. She appeared at the 2019 Mardi Gras.
When it comes to radio, the NFSA has digitised more than 250 hours of Gaywaves (Sydney’s first regularly broadcast gay and lesbian radio program) held on compact cassette and VHS tapes. An interview with producer and presenter Prue Borthwick reveals what it was like working on the groundbreaking program from 1980 to 1991 and sharing her personal experiences on-air.
It also illustrates how slow progress has been in some ways. In 1991, Borthwick co-produced the five-part lesbian parenting special Mothers and Others, some 24 years before the NSW government banned Gayby Baby from being screened in schools and 26 years before Australia finally legalised same-sex marriage in 2017. Borthwick acknowledges that 'some issues still exist, but discrimination and hostility have probably lessened'.
'Feminism and Gay Liberation were highly political and personal at the same time,’ she said. ‘As well as the empowerment and excitement we felt as activists, Gaywaves provided us with the space to explore and express our sexuality, our identity, culture, and history, and our listeners shared these experiences with us. I suspect it was quite powerful radio.’
Jackie Randles interviews Prue Borthwick on Media Magazine about an obscenity ruling by the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, 1982. NFSA title: 506172
Among the best-known Australian screen stories is the tale of two drag queens and a trans woman who board a ‘budget Barbie camper’ named Priscilla and drive across the outback. Priscilla has dazzled and delighted audiences since its midnight screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994 and shows no signs of stopping. See the magic again: Oscar-winning costumes, posters, stills, interviews with director Stephan Elliott, and more. Just be prepared to want to watch the film again immediately after.
The collection also includes clips from classics including Head On (1998), The Sum of Us (1994), Only the Brave (1994) and Love and Other Catastrophes (1996).
In television, Australia broke ground in the 1970s with Number 96 for its representation of a gay couple and for featuring a trans character – played by a trans performer. And years before Heath Ledger starred in Brokeback Mountain, he played a cyclist grappling with coming out and homophobia in the 1996 series Sweat – one of his first-ever acting credits.
Despite these breakthrough examples, the Australian screen industry still struggled with representing diverse voices on screen. For writer-director Julie Kalceff, that meant bypassing the gatekeepers by making a lesbian web series on a shoestring budget – Starting from Now – and putting it online in 2015. They amassed more than 10 million views in the first year. It was one of the first of a wealth of Australian online and shortform series with queer characters, from Homecoming Queens on SBS On Demand, to YouTube series Flunk and Sexy Herpes, The Formal on TikTok, and more.
The NFSA continues to add to and preserve Australia’s audiovisual culture, meaning that in another nearly 50 years, people will be able to look back as we do now and be proud of how far we’ve come.
Caris Bizzaca is a journalist, writer, podcaster and emerging screenwriter working on unceded Gadigal Land in Sydney.
Return to LGBTQIA+ Pride Collection
Main image: Terence Stamp, Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving on the set of Priscilla, 1993. Photo: Elise Lockwood. NFSA title: 1489234
Dashiell Hannoush talks to Prue Borthwick about the LGBTQIA+ radio program Gaywaves and how she turned her personal stories into social statements.
Guest contributor Diane Minnis looks back at news file footage of the seminal lesbian and gay rights protests that followed the first Mardi Gras in Sydney, 1978.
Pioneering broadcasters and the rise of FM radio contributed to LGBTQIA+, First Nations, women, non-English speaking, and young listeners hearing themselves for the first time.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.
