In 1979, a small community of Irish lesbians established a network of underground telephone helplines to provide a lifeline for people experiencing isolation, abuse and/or profound loneliness. After all, homosexuality faced intense social and legal hostility in a conservative Ireland.
The feature documentary Lesbian Lines, which was directed by Cara Holmes (Notes From Sheepland) will world premiere in the international competition lineup of Sheffield DocFest on Thursday, June 11, now brings an intimate portrait of these help- and life-lines to the big screen.
Audiences get to meet original helpline volunteers, watch actors bring to life this so far undocumented part of history through dramatized sequences and relive or discover archival material. The resulting cinematic mix is as moving as it is joyful. The phone volunteers logged every call, and Lesbian Lines even shows us these handwritten notes, along with old telephones.
With cinematography by Aidan Gault and editing by Colin Campbell and Holmes, Lesbian Lines tells a story of community, connection and the power of listening. Holmes actually started off in editing, saying: “When I’m not directing, I do edit feature documentaries.” And she tells THR: “I feel my role is very fluid as a filmmaker, so I like to not keep things too defined. I like the openness of being able to do a few different things.”
Lesbian Lines comes from executive producers Katie Holly and Yvonne Donohoe of Keeper Pictures, Niamh Fagan of Screen Ireland, and Sally Roden and Grainne McAleer of Irish broadcaster RTÉ. The producer is Evan Horan of Keeper Pictures, who is also handling sales.
Holmes talked to THR about the challenges and pleasures of documenting a period of history that suddenly doesn’t feel quite like a distant past anymore, the universal and timely themes the film explores and why it was key for Lesbian Lines to feature not just darkness but also joy.
Why did you want to tell the story of Lesbian Lines?
Sometimes there’s so much history and there is so much behind it. This absolutely was a helpline, and many of the women I spoke to told me that you can’t underestimate the power of making a simple phone call and, on the other side, having someone answering the phone. It’s about that really simple act of having someone listen to you, having someone support you, having someone invite you into a community, feeling this belonging. It’s about all of those things that we need as human beings. When you live in a society that really was just piling on lots of shame and wanting to push you out, all of those things are particularly important.
For me, the personal motivation was that this history isn’t in our school books. Why are we learning one type of history but not this whole other side of queer history, women’s history. I call these women my heroes because they paved the way for younger generations, including myself, to live in a freer society. These are women to be worshipped.
When did you start work on it?
I frame it around COVID, because that’s when I was doing a lot of the research, and there were so many history talks online.
It was great to see these old-school telephones. Where did you get those for the film and how key to the storytelling did you feel they were?
It was funny because a lot of the volunteers kept a lot of the phones, because they knew how important this work was in their lives. It was this idea of the landline and one connecting cable. We did a bit of sourcing, but I had a couple [of phones], because I’m old enough. It wasn’t too difficult, and it is a really iconic piece of machinery now.
It’s just the simplicity that you had the handset and the dial. A lot of the women were talking about just finding that privacy, for example in the telephone box if that was not really there at home. A lot of the women had to go outside to the local telephone box and were really worried that somebody was standing outside listening in to the conversation. If they had a phone in their house, they moved rooms or waited to make sure nobody was there.
One of the themes that I felt the doc keep suggesting that I walked away with is the idea that you have to look at the past to enable the presence and the future. Can you talk about that a bit?
A big challenge for us was: How do you make a film about this kind of queer history when conventional archives fail you, when there are no real archives to tell the story? So a big part of it for us was to bring in younger generations to demonstrate what the women were talking about. Ny bringing in these younger queer actors, they were learning on the job as well as they were reading the scripts and stories and meeting the older women. That was key for me.
While it’s absolutely fantastic to document these stories. It’s all about learning and giving younger generations the confidence to know what came before them. Knowing what came before you just propels you into having confidence. We talk a lot about shame of the past. There is still that shame around, but I think when you see that there are older people, 30, 40, 50 years ago, doing all this work and bringing it to you, then you learn about it and can carry it forward.
And you see yourself as part of which generation?
I very much see myself in that middle generation. I’m some kind of weird transmitter. And it was an absolute privilege for me to listen to these women’s stories. A lot of younger people don’t want to talk on the phone anymore, but I spent my entire COVID phoning up these older women to hear their stories, so I could personally learn and bring all of that stuff into the film. It’s kind of like a lesbian transmission, really, flowing down the generations.
And I have really no doubt that by knowing these women existed, knowing their stories, listening to them, I have more confidence in myself going out into the world with this breadth of knowledge.
How much do you think things have improved for lesbians in Ireland and beyond?
It was definitely a harder country to live in back in the ’80s – 100 percent. It was harder than it is now for some people. For trans people, it’s still quite difficult.
I think in the U.K., at the moment, it seems much more problematic than in Ireland for trans people when it comes to being able to live their lives in the way that they want. Just like women were treated as lesbian women back in the ’80s, it’s exactly the same arguments that trans people are hearing now. It is definitely a case of history repeating itself and fear mongering and all of those things coming back into the ether.
As these women in our film were talking about the historical elements, the parallels were kind of depressing, because you are wondering: “Have we not moved on to just let people live and be who they want to be, confidently and freely?”
I felt the pain and challenges in Lesbian Lines, but also the positive and the joy, which left me hopeful. Can you explain how you approached the tone of the doc?
For the film, I just wanted to always bring it back to that human level from this abstract political thing. Even using the word “lesbian,” is giving people that confidence to use those words as well and claim those identities in a positive way.
It’s massive, huge, to be able to just live in your own identity confidently. And I felt that the phone line specifically was a way to get into that history, but always bring it back to the idea of a phone call and how that can just transform people’s lives.
While things were bad, the women in the film were super clear to me that they didn’t want to be in a film that didn’t have queer joy in it. Because while it was hard and they had to go through a lot of stuff, they had an awful lot of fun, too, and they want younger people to see that as well. They had lives, they were partying, they were doing all this kind of stuff, but it was underground and grassroots. So, it was important to strike that balance between the hardships and the queer joy.
Have you considered making all the insight you collected for Lesbian Lines available in some form to a museum or archive or so?
You’re doing so much research for a film. This was a six-year history project, and you just do a deep dive into it. So, I really feel like I have a doctorate in Lesbian Lines studies. I’ve been thinking an awful lot about it. The film is one thing and great to have, but there is so much more material – from the women in the film alone. I have two to three hours of material from each one, and I called at least 50 or 60 women during the research period.
In Ireland, we have the Irish Queer Archive, which is great, but it’s hard enough to access through the national library. So if someone came to me and said, “I’m going to offer you a website and a space to put all this material,” I would be running to them, because it’s too precious for people not to hear it – with consent from the women, of course. Yeah, I think there should be whole library sections dedicated to this.
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