Lianna and the lesbians of art cinema

In 1977, Caroline Sheldon's pioneering study of 'Lesbians and Film' noted that art cinema had gone 'relatively unexplored by feminists given that feminist film culture emerged at a time when Hollywood was the cinema being assessed'. ¹ Interestingly, this remains true, despite (or perhaps because of?) that cinema's increasing deployment of feminist and lesbian themes and its consumption by feminist audiences. (Contemporary examples might range across films with specifically lesbian themes or implications, like Another Way [1982] or The Bostonians [1984], to the broader considerations of female friendship in those directed by von Trotta.)