I’m Here, I’m Home, I’m Happy Documentary

I’m Here, I’m Home, I’m Happy is a Cork LGBT documentary from the Cork LGBT Archive. The film uses extracts from oral history interviews and items from the Cork LGBT Archive, to explore the lives of some LGBT people in Cork in the 1970s and 1980s. It explores how the Cork LGBT community provided a sense of connection, belonging, mutual support and fun to LGBT people at a time of criminalisation, prejudice and discrimination. The participants talk about the community spaces, parties, pubs, clubs and political activism. "It was fun, Cork in the 1980s was so much fun." There is a definite positive slant to the film. There is a perception that it must have been awful to be LGBT in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s. There were clear challenges, but the film focuses on was what happened when you found your community, found your tribe – the fundamental difference it made to LGBT people’s lives and lived experiences. It is important, especially for young LGBT people, that we have sense of our history; that we see the connections between where we came from and where we are now and how change happens; to see the pride, the fun, the strength, the resilience, resistance - that it wasn’t all negative. The Cork LGBT Community were Agents of Change. We were central players in bringing about social change in Ireland and in the lived experience of LGBT people. We challenged the dominant narratives about what it meant to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender: that we are not sick, sinners or criminals. Recent changes, like Marriage Equality and Gender Recognition Legislation, didn’t happen out of the blue; they built on decades of activism, of people being brave and sassy and demanding equality and respect.