Heaven (Gay Life)

1980-02-17
Sound
27m

The LGBT current affairs series visits the new Heaven nightclub, contrasting it with other parts of London’s gay scene.

Though much progress has been made, such unhelpfully polarising struggles with identity and sexuality still pervade the gay scene. To its credit the programme does acknowledge that lesbians were barely catered for by the swathe of new venues opening - one explanation being they were generally earning less than their gay male counterparts. Produced by LWT's Minorities Unit, Gay Life was the UK's first dedicated LGBT TV series. Broadcast to the London region late on Sunday nights, the series ran from February to March 1980, with a second series following in the summer of 1981.

Queer Britain

This colourful and challenging collection explores screen representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lives over the past century.

British cinema boasts a long history of carefully coded queerness, but for much of the 20th century explicit depictions of gay life in drama or documentary were more or less taboo. Gay men were subject to vicious state-sanctioned persecution, while lesbians were socially ostracised and the transgender community ignored and misunderstood. Cinematic and small-screen breakthroughs in the 1950s and 60s played their part in the public debate. Finally acting on the recommendations of the Wolfenden Committee a decade earlier, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act partially decriminalised male homosexuality in England and Wales, between two men over 21, in private. As those caveats suggest, the legislation remained problematic. But it was a step forward, paving the way for further battles - some yet to be won. From early glimpses of 'queer' characters, this collection charts the path towards '67 and beyond, through responses to the AIDS crisis to diverse reflections on queer life today.