“Queer Cinema” has been used since the early 1990s to describe Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) movies, and after gay romance “Brokeback Mountain” came out in 2005, earning $178 million at worldwide box offices, there was hope among the LGBT community that opportunities for Queer Cinema to crossover to the mainstream would rapidaly materialize.

But in numerous interviews and panel discussions at the Sundance Film Festival, the consensus is that the crossover has not fully taken place. LGBT filmmakers still struggle to raise funds for their low-budget movies and earn a profit at box offices. Yet even as they scrape for every production penny, LGBT filmmakers say progress is being made, and some wonder if the term “Queer Cinema” should be dropped, altogether.

“People are still mortgaging their houses to scrape together financing,” explained J.D. DiSalvatore, producer of “Shelter,” a gay love story backed by the here! cable TV network.

Still, the increase in LGBT roles on television and in mainstream movies has offered more opportunity to LGBT writers and directors and shown investors there is mainstream interest in gay stories. As that interest and acceptance grows, so should budgets and production values for Queer Cinema.

“We are seeing more Queer films, and an increase in quality in the last five years,  in part because filmmakers are now making their second and third movies and there’s more money to put into Queer films,” said Kirsten Schaffer, executive director for Los Angeles festival, Outfest. She said festival organizers are hopeful that upcoming “Kiss the Bride” starring Tori Spelling — the first film made out of the Outfest screenwriting lab — can cross the gay/straight divide.

Speaking on a panel at the Queer Lounge, Christine Vachon, producer of such LGBT-minded fare as “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” wondered if it is time to drop the term Queer Cinema, altogether as the stories change and move toward the mainstream.

“Films that were at Sundance in 1992, ‘93, like “Poison,” “Swoon,” and the “Living End,” were set against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis and a sense of urgency. There was this idea that if you didn’t say (Queer Cinema) it now, you weren’t going to get a chance to.” Vachon recalled. But “where do you put a movie like “Brokeback Mountain?” Is it Queer or not Queer?,” she wondered. “The understanding has changed and perhaps the term should be abandoned.”

Whatever the term, Paul Colichman, Executive Director and CEO of here!, said the the LGBT community must continue making films to communicate gay stories. “Every time you make a film, distribute a film or as a journalist write about a film you are part of preserving the gay and lesbian history,” he reminded a crowd at the annual Outfest Brunch at Sundance, ”We are winning the culture war as long as we stay engaged.”