"
New Queer Cinema" is a term first coined by the academic
B. Ruby Rich in
Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in
queer-themed
independent filmmaking in the early 1990s. The term developed from use of the word
queer in academic writing in the 1980s and 1990s as an inclusive way of describing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender identity and experience, and also defining a form of sexuality that was fluid and subversive of traditional understandings of sexuality. Since 1992, the phenomenon has also been described by various other academics and has been used to describe several other films released since the 1990s. Films of the New Queer Cinema movement typically share certain themes, such as the rejection of
heteronormativity and the lives of
LGBT protagonists living on the fringe of society.