As Queer Screen’s 2017 Mardi Gras Film Festival draws near, choosing which events to attend can feel like a pretty daunting task. To offer a hand, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most inclusive, diverse and intersectional films at this year’s festival, to help you navigate the program, Archer style. CHECK IT Check It is one …

A few months ago, I was given the opportunity to indulge in the delightful collision between popular culture and minority politics at the Melbourne International Film Festival screening of Little Girl Blue. As the title may suggest to loyal fans, Amy Berg’s 2015 biopic presents a sprawling map of Janis Joplin’s life, her incomparable talent, …

Rebecca Shaw (aka Brocklesnitch) is a writer, co-host of Bring A Plate podcast and creator of the parody Twitter account @NoToFeminism. She tweets hilarious responses to the sexist arguments about gender equality, complete with shoddy spelling and grammar. She just recently turned her famous Twitter account into a book, No To Feminism. Dani Leever asked her a few …

This is an excerpt from Pink Ink: The Golden Era for Gay and Lesbian Magazines by Bill Calder, out now.   The late 20th century was a golden era for Australian gay magazines and newspapers: more than five million copies of publications were printed annually at its peak, with revenues approaching eight million dollars a year.  Yet there …

I recall blowing out four candles on my birthday cake and wishing that I’d wake up the next day as a girl. I can remember making that same wish with five candles, with six, with 16 and even with 32. There’s a lot that held me back from transition earlier in life – shame, guilt, …

Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars and Theology Before Stonewall (2013) by Marie Cartier explores the crucial community spaces built by lesbians in America in the mid 20th Century. The title was lifted from one of the author’s ex-lovers: “In 1995, I was dating a butch woman who at one point said to me, …

It’s a horrific experience, editing print deadlines, and one of the lesser-known challenges of old-school journalism. I’ve just sent my seventh issue of Archer Magazine to the printers, and the bad news is, it doesn’t get any easier. The good news is there are coping mechanisms that might help you keep it together (or not). I’m …

Member of poetry duo Darkmatter, Alok Vaid-Menon, chats to us about performance, faggotry and being freakishly queer. This is an excerpt from Archer Magazine #7, the THEY/THEIRS issue. Q: How has your trip to Australia been so far? Politically and racially, everyone has a different idea of what’s going on here. US frameworks around race, …

Alex Lahey is a singer-songwriter from Melbourne, Australia who is having a pretty fantastic year. From winning the $7,500 Josh Pyke Partnership and playing on the stages of Splendour in the Grass festival to the release of a seriously successful debut EP, Lahey is getting a lot of love from the music industry. I meet …

As an author, taboo is a tricky field to navigate. My desensitisation to certain words and scenarios has been altered through my research and experiences. Depictions of violence, gore and sexual content fuel my curiosity to see how such descriptions guide readers into deciding what is acceptable in narrative and what is taboo. Queer literature …

You may have heard the whispers: our next issue (out December) is themed THEY/THEIRS, and spotlights transgender and non-binary folks. As usual, we brought together a bunch of creatives and models for a fashion shoot, to showcase a couple of our partner brands. For this issue, our models were transgender and non-binary, and our product included a lot of latex (thanks Max …

A fun element of being both queer and a lover of cinema is that you are so desperate to see a likeness of yourself and your community that you will watch literally any movie that has any hint of LGBT representation. You may have found a wonderful little selection of films online that focus on …

Transgender children have been the focus of considerable media attention in Australia over the past two years. Two examples this year are episodes of Australian Story and 60 Minutes, where viewers shared in the journeys of Georgie, Emma and Izzie, three transgender teenagers. The episodes highlight how the media can either contribute to or inhibit the …

The fourth annual Queer Screen Film Fest is around the corner, kicking off in Sydney on 20 September. In addition to 12 films at Event Cinemas George Street, the festival includes a free screening of Inside Out (one of our favourites) in Sydney Park (18 Sep), and screenings in Canberra and the Blue Mountains in October. To get the low-down …

JD Samson is best known as a member of electroclash band Le Tigre and the art/performance collective MEN. She helped form the Dykes Can Dance troupe, and contributed to Broadly documentary The Last Lesbian Bars. Lottie Turner interviewed JD Samson for issue #6 of Archer Magazine, which you can buy here for the modest price …

Dale Woodbridge-Brown is a queer Kamilaroi man from Mungindi, trained in acrobatics, flying trapeze, baton twirling, and dance. He joined Circus Oz in 2012, and is the MC for the currently touring Twentysixteen show. A: Being queer, being a Kamilaroi man, do you see your performance, your acrobatics and MCing as a way of giving …

Cash Savage is a country-blues musician and a Melbourne institution. Her new album, One of Us, is currently at #1 on the Australian community radio charts. Here, she is interviewed by her wife Amy Middleton, founding editor of Archer Magazine, about her national tour, being a woman in music, politics and married life. Q: Hi …

ORDER ARCHER MAGAZINE #6 HERE “We know what ‘she’ isn’t. ‘She’ is not a uterus. ‘She’ is not having a child, or being a daughter.  ‘She’ is not always paid less, though she is more likely to be. ‘She’ may change her pronouns; perhaps many times. We do know that gender is highly complex, entirely individual, …

On International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, it’s important to consider how the representations of homophobia and transphobia in our news and fictional media are impacting how we view these issues, and how they affect queer youth. The way we position trans youth in relation to their families paints a particularly one dimensional narrative. In …

I have been thinking a lot lately about my own body hair, hair in general, and how media censorship is particularly harsh on pubic hair.   Canadian artist and writer Petra Collins had her Instagram account deleted over an image of pubic hair. She responded with a great article on censorship and the female body …

In this photo essay, photographer Charlie Brophy captures the youthful characters and playful antics of her first forays into sharehouse living.  There was a sense of youthful innocence in most of the sharehouses I entered from the age of 18. Each housemate enthusiastically explored new possibilities and ‘first times’, and I became obsessed with that freedom …

Lady Sings It Better is a comedic cabaret made up of four women who perform misogynistic songs by the likes of Robin Thicke, Usher, and Nine Inch Nails. This tongue-in-cheek cabaret quartet is bringing their show to the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and Charlotte Long caught up with one of their members, Maeve Marsden, for a …