Terence Davies (born November 10, 1945)

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Terence Davies won the 1998 International Critics Award at Cannes for Distant Voices, Still Lives. The film went on to acclaim and popularity with audiences around the world. In 1992 he followed it with The Long Day Closes, which received similar accolades.

Davies’ third film, The Neon Bible, is set in the American South of the 1920s and ’30s. Gena Rowlands stars as an over-the-hill nightclub singer who returns to her small hometown, where she encourages her young, introverted nephew to come out of his shell. She also inspires him to rebel against strict religion and morality, with tragic results.

Davies has said the heroes in his films tend to be women because “being gay, I feel uncomfortable with men.”

Source: Stern, Keith (2009-09-01). Queers in History: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Historical Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals (Kindle Locations 4129-4135). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

Further Readings:

British Queer Cinema (British Popular Cinema) by Robin Griffiths
Hardcover: 264 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (April 20, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0415307783
ISBN-13: 978-0415307789
Amazon: British Queer Cinema

British Queer Cinema draws together a diverse range of innovative new essays that explore, for the first time, the provocative history of lesbian, gay and queer representation in British cinema.
From the early years of ‘Pre-Gay’ film, through to the social upheaval of post-war ‘permissiveness’, Gay Liberation and the ‘post-AIDS’ queer generation, contributors examine the shifting and complex nature of queer identity, desire and spectatorship across a number of classical and contemporary British popular film genres and traditions.

Through case studies of key works such as The Killing of Sister George, Prick Up Your Ears and Beautiful Thing, a reappraisal of the films of Anthony Asquith, Terence Davies and Derek Jarman, to the ‘queerness’ of the heritage film, the homoerotic ‘New Wave’, or the star performances of Dirk Bogarde, Beryl Reid and Stephen Fry, this timely collection maps the relationship between contemporary queer sexuality and its socio-historical, national and critical contexts.