Canadian Women Film Directors Database
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Quote:
"Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax) was screened in the 1986 San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in a program called 'Lesbian Shorts.' I did not attend the Festival but was contacted by the frantic programmer with news of the screening. Apparently the predominantly lesbian audience had thoroughly enjoyed the first scene between the two women, but when the washroom sex scene [between two men] came on their response became hostile. Women demanded refunds on their tickets, the projection booth was stormed and attempts were made to stop the film. Through my discussions with the programmer and reading the editorials in the local Bay area gay newspaper I came to understand the frustration of some of the lesbian audience. They wanted and expected to see work which reinforced their sexual orientation. They wanted hard cold lesbian content, not a film which included gay and straight encounters. Overnight, and inadvertently, I had entered the debate of 'what is a lesbian film?'"
-- Midi Onodera


Source:
Onodera, Midi. "Dishing It Out and Taking It." In By, For & About: Feminist Cultural Politics, edited by Wendy Waring. Toronto: Women's Press, 1994. (pp. 146-147)