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Crowe is the macho but vulnerable gay plumber wary of being hurt and coping with his overbearing widower dad. The legendary Jack Thompson and the soon-to-be-legendary Russell Crowe play a father and son both looking for love in this big-hearted dark comedy. LGBTQI culture had well and truly entered the mainstream.
#Great vintage gay movies movie
The movie became a cultural juggernaut around the globe, and together with Muriel’s Wedding and Strictly Ballroom, cemented Australia’s reputation for counter culture flamboyance and chutzpah. One Tassie politician from the time, Robert Archer, even called for homosexuals to be “tracked down and wiped out” by police.
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It’s confronting to think of how Australia fell in love with a trio of outrageous drag queens prancing their glorious way across the outback, parts of the country that had the world’s toughest penalties for gay sex. The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert (1994) The Getting Of Wisdom was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978 and gave Beresford his big break in Hollywood, where he went on to direct hits including Tender Mercies, Driving Miss Daisy and Mao’s Last Dancer. Look out for Barry Humphries as a straight-laced vicar in this sweet, affecting coming-of-age drama that was considered risqué at the time, but really isn’t. Hijinks and lesbian canoodling at a strict Presbyterian ladies college in the 1890s ensue when a gifted student with the Dr Seuss-like name Laura Tweedle Rambotham falls for an older girl soon after lying to her friends about an affair with the school’s minister. Wannabe art student Paul (Sean McEuan) becomes the muse of a clothes designer and is soon entangled in ‘The Set’, the seedy and bohemian Sydney fashion world where he falls for Tony (Rod Mullinar).īizarrely, the film’s trailer seems to take a stand against homosexuality, the narrator proclaiming that Tony is trying “to escape from tangled, unnatural passions” and that “his relationship is acceptable in this age when moral standards are confused”. Though very dated, it’s still an important landmark, released when consenting sex between two adults was viewed as worse than armed robbery. This was the first Australian film that dared to feature an actual gay romance as its main theme. Here are 15 of the greatest Aussie LGBTQI flicks to watch: 1. Big screen gay love stories rarely seem to end happily. With such a hateful swamp of conservative legislators, it was left to the movie industry to fight for equal rights in love, marriage and child custody law, hence why, in nearly all of the movies here, the gay relationship is a ‘problem’ for wider society and the participants endure abuse, violence or hate. (Lesbian sex, meanwhile, has never been illegal.)
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Even then, the stubborn pollies in Tasmania made sure it was still a crime there until 1997. It’s staggering that homosexual acts between men were only made legal throughout Australia in 1994, the same year The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of the Desert exploded joyfully into cinemas the world over. Then the authorities came to their senses and ruled that instead, it merited a mere 20 years in jail – double the maximum sentence for statutory rape. Until 1949, having gay sex was a hanging offence in Victoria.