Homosexuality in the elderly through the films

Hannah Free (Wendy Jo Carlton, 2009) and Cloudburst (Thom Fitzgerald, 2011)

Abstract

Old age is a stage of life that has been significantly set apart from the interest of gender studies and queer theory
itself. Recent changes in society and in some countries’ legislations have begun to generate an opening and a gradual disappearance of the halo of invisibility that surrounded this part of the population, an openness that starts to become present in different areas and fields such as the media and artistic expressions, specifically, in cinema. In recent decades, various films that have focused their respective plots on the problems faced by old age
homosexuals which recover situations, abuses, and stigmas that individuals belonging to this sector are subjected to. This text focuses on what is shown in the films known as Hannah Free (Carlton, 2009), and Cloudburst (Fitzgerald, 2011), in both movies, the protagonists are elderly homosexual women. We will analyze how the sexuality of these women is addressed, what messages around sexuality the productions seek to communicate, as well as the problems they face when they are part of the otherness in a world of heteronomy. This text will take some specific studies on homosexuality in the elderly into account, as well as the cohort model proposed by Sue Westwood, one
of the main and few academic references on the subject.