The Barbican Cinema is presenting a focused season titled Queer 60s: LGBTQ+ Cinema In The Decade Before Stonewall, running between 9 June and 7 July. Programmed to coincide with Pride Month, this lineup assembles feature films, short collections and live events that examine how filmmakers and communities found ways to depict and celebrate queer lives at a moment when same-sex relationships remained criminalised in many places. The season invites audiences to view previously marginalised work in the context of both cultural resistance and creative joy, featuring restorations and seldom-screened pieces intended for cinema viewing.
This initiative builds on earlier retrospectives at the Barbican that explored later decades, and it continues a curatorial strand dedicated to foregrounding queer visibility on screen. Led by the venue’s film programming team, the season balances well-known milestones with discoveries from archives and private collections. Audiences can expect a mixture of canonical titles, short-form programs and curated events that highlight how film form—from documentaries to experimental home movies—served as a site for queer expression in the 1960s.
Programme highlights and feature screenings
The season opens with Frank Simon’s documentary The Queen, which chronicles the build-up to a 1967 New York drag pageant and remains a touchstone for queer documentary cinema. Alongside this, the Barbican screens a selection of influential works, including Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966), noted for its intense female relationship and formal daring. Multiple long-form screenings are paired with themed shorts programs such as Gay Erotica From The 1960s and Queer Britain On Screen In The 1960s, allowing visitors to see how representations varied across regions and genres. The choices underline how filmmakers used subtlety, metaphor and direct documentation to assert queer presence.
Discoveries, restorations and context
Curators have traced rare reels and private prints to assemble sequences that illuminate less circulated corners of the era. The season juxtaposes polished festival favorites with intimate work—home movies, experimental pieces and civic documentaries—that together offer a fuller picture of queer life. These programs foreground the archive as an active source of storytelling and recovery, showing material that often survives only in private collections. By presenting those works on a big screen, the Barbican aims to restore both the films and the histories they imply.
Special events and curated collaborations
Several evenings are dedicated to unique presentations. A special program called Film Rarities And The Films of Edwards Owens gathers seldom-seen queer titles and is accompanied by a live score performed by students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Another curated shorts package, Bits And Bobs From The 1960s, includes a recorded introduction by filmmaker and programmer Jenni Olson and offers snapshots ranging from a queer teenager’s holiday footage to a portrait of a trans woman navigating love. These commissioned events merge film screening with contemporary performance and academic context, inviting new readings of the material.
Curatorial vision and audience experience
Curator Alex Davidson and the programming team emphasise the thrill of rediscovery: assembling psychological dramas, musicals, documentaries and ephemeral pieces that rarely play in public. The intention is to show how the 1960s produced both coded narratives and bold, explicit documents of queer life. Rebecca Fons, the Barbican’s Head of Film, has overseen the multi-year project that progressively explored queer representation across decades, aiming to provide audiences with historical continuity and a sense of cultural evolution from the 1960s onward.
Supporting queer media and further information
Alongside the cinema season, readers who appreciate media created by and for queer women and gender-diverse people may be interested in organisations that sustain this work. The long-running magazine DIVA champions such voices and its publishing body has become the DIVA Charitable Trust, a registered charity committed to supporting queer media and community projects. For more information on the season, the Barbican directs audiences to the program page titled queer-60s-lgbtq-cinema-in-the-decade-before-stonewall, while those wishing to support queer media can learn more about DIVA via their social links and the trust’s site.