A year ago, The L Word producer Ilene Chaiken announced that she was launching a new project to follow on from the series that ended almost ten years ago. With six seasons and 70 episodes, The L Word (USA, Showtime 2004-2009, Creators Ilene Chaiken, Kathy Greenberg, Michele Abbott) is a pop culture format, the first to place lesbian protagonists at the centre of its story. Over a period of five years, Chaiken accompanied a group of Los Angeles friends in their everyday life, focusing on issues such as relationships and identities, sex, lesbian parenthood, lesbian-feminist history, racism, transphobia and breast cancer.
The series begins with the characters being introduced to each other by a hetero couple who move into the neighbourhood of Bette Porter and Tina Kennard. Jenny Schecter, the new girl in the area, soon falls in love with Marina Ferrer and becomes part of her inner circle. In the first 13 episodes, the narrative revolves mainly around Jenny’s coming out, but also around Bette and Tina’s desire to have children and Dana Fairbanks’ tennis career, for which she is required to pass as straight.
The Festival invites old and new fans to see the legendary series all over again: What was The L Word? We’ll be showing the first episodes of the series for almost a whole day, and discussing them with editor-in-chief of L-MAG Manuela Kay, who knows all there is to know about The L Word. What importance did the series have for lesbian / queer representations, and why would a relaunch be interesting? The idea that the series would trigger a whole host of other lesbian series has only turned out to be partly the case.
Manuela Kay
Manuela Kay, born and raised in West Berlin, has been an active member of the lesbian and gay scene since 1979. She is a journalist and joint director of Special Media SDL Verlag publishers, co-editor of the magazines Siegessäule – Queer in Berlin, and editor-in-chief and co-editor of the lesbian magazine L-MAG, Das Magazin für Lesben. She has published several books, including Schöner Kommen (Querverlag, 2000), made sex-positive films such as Airport (1994) and has been co-organizer and curator of the Pornfilmfestival Berlin since 2007. She also translated the book The L Word – Willkommen in unserer Welt (The L Word – Welcome to Our World) by Kera Bolonik, published by Querverlag in 2006, and created the L-MAG specialist magazine L-MAG Deluxe around the series The L Word.
