The Queer Filmmaker Who Documented Australia’s AIDS Crisis

On January 25, 1992, a significant event took place at the Sundance Film Festival. A group of gay and queer filmmakers gathered on stage to discuss a pivotal moment for LGBTQ representation in cinema. Among the panelists were notable figures such as Todd Haynes, Derek Jarman, and 18-year-old prodigy Sadie Benning. Representing Sydney were two filmmakers: Stephen Cummins, then 31, and 29-year-old Simon Hunt, who later gained fame as Pauline Pantsdown, a satirical sensation.

The Australian duo was at Sundance to present their homoerotic experimental short film, “Resonance.” The atmosphere at the festival was electric. The previous year, Haynes’ debut feature “Poison” and Jennie Livingston’s documentary “Paris Is Burning” had won major prizes at Sundance, drawing a large and enthusiastic queer audience. It was also a time when the AIDS crisis was at its peak. Art was seen as a form of activism, with artists driven by the urgency to create and be seen. Hunt recalls the sentiment of the time: “We don’t know how long we’re going to live, so we have to find happiness, we have to make a mark, we have to be seen.”

This panel was later recognized as a tipping point for the “new queer cinema” movement, which eventually led to mainstream films like Kimberly Peirce’s “Boys Don’t Cry” and Anthony Minghella’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

Sadly, Cummins did not live to witness the full impact of this movement. He passed away from an AIDS-related illness in 1994 at the age of 34. However, his legacy lives on in Sydney’s cultural institutions, such as Queer Screen—a film festival organizer he co-founded in 1993—and the Stephen Cummins residency for queer artists at Performance Space, an experimental arts incubator.

This month, a collection of nine of Cummins’ short films will be showcased at the Melbourne International Film Festival. This follows the world premiere of the collection in Sydney in 2023 and a screening at London’s Barbican Centre in March. The program features a mix of poetic and erotic student films shot on Super 8, created during Cummins’ time at Sydney College of the Arts, and utopian visions of homosexual joy and intimacy in public settings.

Among the highlights is “Resonance,” the film that Cummins and Hunt screened at Sundance. This lush, 35mm black-and-white film won best short at the Sydney Film Festival in 1991 and was featured at over 100 international festivals. The program also includes significant later works, such as a 30-second close-up of two men kissing, which was commissioned for Perth television but banned by the TV station, and “The HIV Game Show”—an anarchic video and animation mashup completed posthumously by Hunt.

These films capture a pivotal decade in Australia’s queer history, from the decriminalization of homosexual sex in New South Wales in 1984 to the spread of HIV/AIDS and the advent of treatments by 1995. Hunt, who collaborated closely with Cummins, reflects on the era: “We had so many people dying, and then suddenly, people who made it to the end of 1994 had all these pills, and most of them are still around.”

Cummins’ films are deeply rooted in this context. Hunt adds, “We’d been having illegal sex for the first four or five years of our adult lives, and that really sort of holds you back and pushes you towards metaphor. Then suddenly, you weren’t facing 12 years in jail for having sex with your boyfriend anymore—but here’s this disease that’s going to kill you. And I think that accounts for the joy in Cummins’s films: the sense that despite all of this, whatever you throw at us, we are going to make our place in society and we’re going to find joy in life.”

This resilience is most evident in “Resonance,” which was inspired by a violent homophobic attack on Cummins in a Sydney laneway. The film begins with a similar act of violence against a young man, then depicts his healing and renewal through queer love and intimacy. “Resonance” eschews dialogue in favor of dance and movement, a nod to Cummins’ strong connections to Sydney’s dance and performance art scenes. In a memorable sequence set in a boxing ring, two men transition from fighting to dancing in unison, symbolizing contrasting expressions of masculinity.

Artist and academic EO Gill discovered “Resonance” in 2013 through the Stephen Cummins residency. The film profoundly impacted them, changing their perception of what film could achieve. “It totally changed me; it changed the way I thought about film,” they said. Gill continues to revisit the film every few years and introduce it to students and emerging queer artists, who are invariably moved by its power.

For Gill, Cummins’ work carries a universal appeal. “His work is experimental but it’s incredibly accessible, too—it makes you feel something, regardless of your interpretation.”

Source: MIFF