AGE OF ACCEPTANCE Community and Inclusion in Sue Thomson’s The Coming Back Out Ball Movie

After a life lived fighting for queer and women’s liberation as well as championing other marginalised voices, including those of Australia’s Indigenous peoples, 78-year-old Pink Floyd fan and former police officer Nance Peck refuses to be disappeared.

Embracing a non-binary gender identity in recent years, after a life lived largely as a lesbian, she’s just as happy being called ‘mate’ as she is going by female pronouns. What she won’t accept, however, is being pushed out of the way by oblivious pedestrians. It’s a red line she clearly demarcates with candour in Sue Thomson’s gloriously life-affirming 2018 documentary The Coming Back Out Ball Movie (TCBOBM). Debuting on the closing night of last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), it follows eleven elders spanning the gender and sexuality spectrums as they prepare to attend the eponymous gala held in their honour at the Melbourne Town Hall on 7 October 2017 – just over a month shy of the release of the results of Australia’s postal vote on marriage equality on 15 November.

Sparrow-like in frame but larger than life, Peck notes, in TCBOBM, that she engages an Australian Football League player’s darting elbow or swift hip thrust to clear her path. This exact premise plays out as I sit down with Peck and Thomson in a Richmond cafe on a stinking-hot Melbourne summer’s day that