Love, Lust, Disability: Thomas Banks’ Quest for Love premieres on Stan

To mark International Day of People with Disability, Stan adds an award-winning Australian doco about the search for intimacy by young gay playwright with cerebral palsy. The film's director-producer Pip Kelly tells us about making it and getting it on TV.

In the opening scenes of the half-hour documentary Thomas Banks’ Quest for Love we see a young gay guy organising a hookup on dating ap Grindr. It’s all looking promising for a fun fling until the other man opens the door and quickly registers that Thomas is not what he was expecting. 

Watching this scene play out is a bit uncomfortable – the quick excuses, the rudely shut door – but such rejections have been common for playwright, performer and disability advocate Thomas Banks, who lives with cerebral palsy. Challenging those snap judgments that other people make about him is part of why he was so keen to put his experiences on screen.

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Rochelle Siemienowicz is Screen Content Lead at Screenhub. She is a writer, film critic and cultural commentator with a PhD in Australian cinema and was the co-host of Australia's longest-running film podcast 'Hell is for Hyphenates'. Rochelle has written a memoir, Fallen, published by Affirm Press. Her second book, Double Happiness, a novel, is out with Midnight Sun on October 1, 2024. Instagram: @Rochelle_Rochelle Twitter: @Milan2Pinsk