This project carves out some of the characteristics specific to the queer underground film movement and uncovers the importance of community and collaboration in the inception, longevity, and resilience of the movement. In close reading film criticism from the time, as well as distinctions present in the film works, I explicated four main characteristics of the queer underground film movement and the surrounding community: shamelessly amateur aesthetic/filmmaking, LGBTQ+ themes and vulgarity, unseriousness, and community and collaboration, as well as labeling and defining a Queer Disgust Aesthetic. These characteristics and aesthetics are present in the film works of the queer underground film movement and are shared with the larger queer underground community, as evidenced in the LGBTQ+ zines. Through geographic mapping and a place-oriented take on the queer underground film movement, I trace the reverberations of the initial boom of the movement in 1960s NYC outwards over time and space by way of George Kuchar's videos and travels and LGBTQ+ zines that circulated via post throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The expansiveness of queer underground communities and hubs are uncovered by the geographical mapping, and we can take the spattering of communities across coastal, inland, urban, and rural spaces to reflect a resilience in queer underground communities, creation, critiques, and sensibilities.
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