The Hidden History of Homosexual Australia takes a panoramic look at the history of gays and lesbians in Australia, from settlement convict days right through to the present.It uses dramatic archives and interviews with experts alongside TV News and excerpts from cinema features to show how gays and lesbians have been treated or viewed in this country for more than two hundred years.
The Hidden History of Homosexual Australia looks at the three main periods of gay and lesbian Australian history. The convict era when it was considered a sin against God. The medical period which lasted from the turn of the century until the nineteen sixties. And the third period when homosexuality came to be seen as a political, cultural, and personal issue by looking at activism and the liberation struggles of the sixties - through to Mardi Gras and the general public acceptance that came about as a result of the Aids crisis in the eighties.
The Hidden History of Homosexual Australia asks though: have gay and lesbian Australians really reached a sunny dawn for themselves in Australia today? Or like gays everywhere, are they still living out the same stories of persecution and oppression of the past but in subtler contemporary models?
Interviewees: John Marsden, David Marr, Steven Cheung, Edward Young, Sue Wills, Gary Wotherspoon, Robert French, Clive Moore, Dennis Altman, Basil Donovan, Ruth Ford, Lucy Chesser, Graham Willet
