'Why Did She Have to Tell the World?' / AP Pobjoy
“It’s probably because the odds are so overwhelmingly against them, that most people find it hard to understand the kind of love that Phyllis and Francesca feel for each other.” - This Day Tonight, 1970
CW: Mention of suicide
It was April 2019, and I was standing in the kitchen of my good friend and co-creator’s house, Bonny Scott. We sat at her kitchen table and drank tea as I showed her a snippet of an interview from the 1970 Television program, ‘This Day Tonight.’ During the interview, the first lesbian couple to ever hit Australian screens, Phyllis Papps and Francesca Curtis, fearlessly told the world of their identities as lesbian women. They promoted a group that stood as the first political gay rights organisation in the country’s history, the Australiasian Lesbian Movement.
ALM was the first safe space for closeted women to turn to, the first time in Australian history that women were opening up about their sexualities. It was the first time lesbianism was coming out of the shadows.
Francesca Curtis and Phyllis Papps are many things. Researchers. Writers. Ultra-Feminists. Partners. Now, in the first documentary of their lives, the couple open up about their contribution to one of the biggest societal shifts in Australian history, about love, loss and political change solidified in their fifty year relationship.
In the last years of their lives, and with a new generation emerging, Phyllis and Francesca shine light on the barriers that still affect the queer community today.
Bonny and I, as well as Director of Photography Felicia Smith, Editor Tayler Martin and Executive Producers Sue Maslin and Diana Fisk are at the tail end of getting Why Did She Have To Tell The World? out there, fifty years from when Phyllis and Francesca originally appeared on television.
The film is planned to be screen on ABC in February 2021, with ongoing support The Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives, Melbourne Arts, Film Art Media, The Post Lounge and individuals such as prolific activist Barbara Creed: but we still need help getting it across the line.
In 2020, LGBTQ young people are still five times more likely to attempt suicide compared to the general public. LGBTQ Australians are twice as likely to have high levels of psychological distress compared to their heterosexual peers. I don’t think those statistics have moved since I came out a little over four years ago.
Our documentary is about changing the story of our LGBTQI+ history, honouring where we’ve come from, and where we have to go.
Why Did She Have to Tell the World? is registered through the Documentary Australia Foundation which takes donations on the film's behalf, allowing them to be fully tax deductible. Please consider donating here.
You can follow AP at @abbiepobjoy, Bonny at @bonny_scott and Why Did She Have to Tell the World? at @whydidshedoco.
AP Pobjoy is a writer, director and documentary-maker from Melbourne, Australia. With a strong sense to unleash the female and queer experience on screen, AP’s work focusses on the interior lives of real live experiences that are predominantly from an outnumbered perspective.