Stephen Cummins Retrospective

A crucial chapter in Australia’s queer cinematic history is brought to light in this National Film and Sound Archive restoration of Stephen Cummins’s haunting, sublime filmography.

Directing nine short films across a decade before his death from HIV-related lymphoma in 1994, Cummins was an openly gay filmmaker whose beautiful, oft-provocative works were produced during the cultural upheaval of the 1980s – against the backdrop of the queer rights movement, the AIDS pandemic and the decriminalisation of male homosexual acts across Australia. His initial experimental works, shot in super-8, utilised the human body as both landscape and canvas, but his growing political consciousness shifted his directorial interest to the place of gay bodies in public spaces. His 1991 film Resonance won Best Short Film at the Sydney Film Festival and screened at over 100 international festivals including Sundance, New York and Toronto, becoming one of the most lauded and successful Australian short films of its era.

Films in this package: Breathbeat (1984), Blue Movie (1984), Deadpan (1985), Le Corps Imagé (1987), Elevation (1989), Taste the Difference (1989), Resonance (1991), Body Corporate (1993) and The HIV Game Show (1995). “Cummins was a leading light in the Australian queer cinema scene of the 1980s and 90s … His nine short films mark a key moment in the New Queer Cinema movement.” – The Queer Review