Barbara Hammer Dyketactics USA, 1974, 4 mins, 16mm

Dennis Day An Illustrated History of Western Music Canada, 1997, 13 mins, video

John Maybury Remembrance of Things Fast UK, 1993, 59 mins, video

The works in this list deal with gay and lesbian themes. These range from discrimination and homophobia to the difficulties of coming out, AIDS, sex and love.

See also:
POLITICS & PROTEST
SEX & SEXUALITY

20TH CENTURY VIXEN
CLAUSE AND EFFECT
UK, 1988, 20 mins, video
Clause and Effect is a tape that combines documentary footage with positive images of gay men and lesbians to show the impact of Clause 28 of the Local Government Bill both on them and the wider community. The tape is framed by an exclusive interview with Derek Jarman who talks about the origins of the Clause, 'its roots in the moral majority and their interpretations of the Bible', the effect that it will have on the community and on his work as a film maker.

KEVIN ADAMS
CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME
1992, USA, 13mins, video
This award winning experimental video is a lyrical yet piercing documentation of the brutal gay bashing murder of 27 year old Paul Broussard that took place in Houston, Texas, in 1991. Broussard's story, told in text, is situated between aestheticized images of gay couples, creating a quietly powerful critique of society's intolerance, while affirming gay presence.

NEIL BARTLETT & STUART MARSHALL
PEDAGOGUE
UK, 1988, 10mins, video
A short performance to camera by solo performer/dramatist Neil Bartlett. Pedagogue explores in comic style the possible implications of Clause 28. Through Clause 28, the British Government took powers to outlaw the 'promotion of homosexuality' in education and local government.

JEFF COLE
THE TRUTH GAME
UK, 190, 16 mins, video
Paul, 18, is gay and wants to tell his father the truth. They go on holiday and play the Truth Game. Now they are back they have to live with the results. Winner of The Gay Times Jack Babbuscio Award for outstanding contribution in depicting gay themes in film.

DENNIS DAY
AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC
CANADA, 1997, 13 mins, video
A loose adaption of so-called western musical genres with a flagrant homosexual bias. Offering little in the way of historical accuracy, An Illustrated History Of Western Music invents both narrative and structure in what is ultimately a play on musical association, and a critique and celebration of gay culture.

NIGEL DEANS & NUBAR GHAZARIAN
L'ATTRACTION: MOVEMENTS OF THE SOUL
Australia, 1995, colour, sound, 6 min, 16mm
L'Attraction follows a soul into the hypnotic world of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the largest celebration of free sexuality of its kind in the world, consisting of a spectacular and vibrant street parade and an all-night dance party attended by almost 20,000 people. L'Attraction not only documents these events but also captures the excitement, the emotions and the auras of the people as they celebrate.

Unfolding layers of intricately composed aural and visual textures create a dazzlingly poetic and highly atmospheric trance-like meditation on the human spirit in ecstasy and release. The imaging of the Mardi Gras is provocatively composed, emotionally compelling and unencumbered by self-conscious stylisation.

Featuring the music of Autechre.

DAVID FARRINGDON
GENTLEMEN
UK, 1988, sound, colour, 15 mins, 16mm
I have tried to give a truthful picture of a taboo subject in an unbiased way, which I hope gives some reason to an occupation perceived by many as unreasonable - the gay sex/desire/frustrations in toilets. D.F.

JEAN GENET
UN CHANT D'AMOUR
France, 1950, silent, B&W, 23 mins, 16mm
"A huge influence on modern gay filmmakers, Un Chant d'amour was made in 1950 by Jean Genet - his only film. It's a silent, sensual and poetic fantasy set in a French prison. Genet's troubling and erotic images steered the film into a history of controversy and censorship...

Henri Langlois gave Un Chant d'amour its public premiere at the Cinematheque Francais in 1954, screening a version cut of its sexually explicit material. But as its producer Nico Papatakis points out, even if the film did not contain erotic sex scenes, it was in every way a gay love story, and therefore scandalous and subject to censorship. Un Chant d'amour was generally unavailable for public viewing in France for the following twenty years...

A screening in New York in March 1964 was raided by the police, who brutalised the organiser, Jonas Mekas, imprisoning him and informing him that he deserved to be shot in front of the cinema screen for 'dirtying America'. The New York case against Un Chant d'amour was eventually dismissed, but not before it had drained its defendants of thousands of dollars...

Un Chant d'amour was premiered in London in February 1971, and has since been shown regularly and widely without issue or censorship on the experimental, art and repertory circuits throughout the UK. However, in early 1989 Hull Town Council refused its Film Theatre permission for a screening. The counsellors' chairman felt that it would be equally offensive to both homosexuals and heterosexuals, and stated, 'If any ordinary member of the public came to see it I think they would be shocked and offended, The Film Theatre leaflet says it is poetic, but I didn't see anything poetic about it.'" - Extracted from Jane Giles, The Cinema of Jean Genet.

"A beautiful film, a lonely film, a hard film."-Peter Gidal.

CARL GEORGE
DHPG MON AMOUR
USA, 1989, sound, colour, 10 mins, 16mm
Love and survival in the age of AIDS. David Conover goes through the demanding daily process of injecting the drug DHPG (garcyclovir) supported by his lover Joe Walsh.

JOHN GREYSON
URINAL
Canada, 1989, sound, 100 mins, 16mm
A motley crew of famous dead artists, including Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, are mysteriously summoned to the garden of two long-dead Toronto sculptors. Their mission? To research the policing of washroom sex in Ontario and propose solutions to this serious crisis for the gay community. Of the group, Dorian Gray is mandated to infiltrate the police force as an undercover 'gay' agent.

Part narrative and part documentary, Urinal weaves together a dazzling array of film, video and computer animation effects to explore the politics of public sex and the policing of sexuality in society. The six dead artists reluctantly embark on their 'research,' and discover that hundreds of men are arrested in Ontario each year on washroom sex charges. Victims of police entrapment and video surveillance, their names are often published in local newspapers, and their lives are destroyed. Some have even committed suicide. Documentary interviews with Svend Robinson, Canada's first out-of-the-closet gay member of parliament, gay activists and men who have been charged with 'gross indecency' are juxtaposed with humorous slide lectures and dramatic reconstructions.

The key to these various concerns seems to be the portrait of Dorian Gray (as painted by Frida Kahlo) - but someone has hidden it in the upstairs attic washroom.

"Funny, sociologically jolting first feature...it makes its points by blending humour with facts about pervasive homosexual discrimination." - Variety.

BARBARA HAMMER
DYKETACTICS
USA, 1974, sound, colour, 4 mins, 16mm
A popular lesbian 'commercial,' 110 images of sensual touching montages in A, B, C, D rolls of 'kinaesthetic' editing. "The images are varied and very quickly presented in the early part of the film, introducing the characters, if you will. The second half of the film slows down measurably and all of a sudden I found myself holding my breath as I watched the images of lovemaking sensually and artistically captured." - Elizabeth Lay, Plexus.

MIKE HOOLBOOM
PANIC BODIES
Canada, 1998, 70 mins, video
"Filmed in the shadow of AIDS, Panic Bodies is Mike Hoolboom's testament to the permanent impermanence of the flesh. The film's six parts show the range of Hoolboom's engagement with mortality, from rage to reverie...Whether he's re-mixing Terminator 2 or concocting a female paradise, Hoolboom finds a balance between razor-sharp intellect and palpable love for images and sounds. To watch Panic Bodies is to see what it means to live and die in the cinema.” - Cameron Bailey, NOW.

JIM HUBBARD
TWO MARCHES
USA, 1991, sound, colour, 10 mins, 16mm
"... scenes shot at two national gay marches on Washington D.C. are juxtaposed to reveal some of the devastating changes in the gay movement from 1979 to 1987, as hope is replaced by frustration and mourning. [...] we follow the shifts in spirit, age and racial composition of the demonstrators and witness the growing organisation of the protest spectacle, as ragtag bunches of rebellious marchers give way to marching bands and the unfurling of the NAMES project AIDS quilt. [...] Always working within a small scale and tightly-focused format, Hubbard has developed an astonishingly varied and emotionally complex body of work over the years, a series of personal film essays of intertwined loss and liberation." - Liz Kotz.

ISAAC JULIEN
JIMMY SOMERVILLE - GENLOCK
UK, 1988, 12 mins, video
An interview-portrait of Communards singer Jimmy Somerville, focusing on censorship and gay representation.

TOM KALIN
FINALLY DESTROY US
USA, 1991, 4 mins, video
Tom Kalin's work focuses on the portrayal of gay sexuality both in the age of AIDS and historically. His tapes are characterised by beautiful sampled images drawn from a variety of film and video sources.

TOBY KALITOWSKI
EXILES OF LOVE
UK, 1992, 2 mins, video
A visually striking and frank documentary, Exiles of Love explores homosexuality's 'quality of darkness.' Four gay men relate accounts of love, attraction, sex, encounters and oppression. The interviews are intercut with stylised sequences inspired by the work of gay playwright, novelist and filmmaker Jean Genet.

CHARLES LOFTON
I LIKE DREAMING
USA, 1994, 6 mins, video
I Like Dreaming is a confession about the pleasures of cruising straight acting, straight appearing men. Structured around the retelling of an (autobiographical) story about a public sexual encounter, I LIKE DREAMING seeks to make observations about the relationships between race/class/cultural identity.

KATHLEEN MAITLAND-CARTER
DESIRE DRIVES HER CAR
Canada, 1990, sound, colour, 8 mins, 16mm
Shot on Yonge Street, Toronto, the cruising centre of Canada; edited in London. A North American foray into car culture and its (non)relationship to female sexuality. 'Kustom Kar Kommandos' (Kenneth Anger) in a Canadian context of constant desire.
"One of the renowned 'J.D.' group of films, featuring the gorgeous dyke Desire who languidly drives her car, cruising chicks to the hip grinding strains of Link Wray. Impeccably cool, funny and visually superb." - Jane Giles.

"...parodies the lust and dust of the macho road movie." - Hertake, Women's Film Festival, Glasgow.

JOHN MAYBURY
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS FAST
UK, 1993, 59 mins, video
Remembrance of Things Fast represents the culmination of Maybury's work in video, which has developed alongside the technology itself. Starring Tilda Swinton and Rupert Everett in lead roles, the tape confronts the conventions of world television and satellite broadcast, drawing on the fragmentary nature of the medium and the clichés of the three minute attention span. At the same time, it replaces bland mainstream images with darker, more satirical observations and studies. The environment is surreal, a virtual reality television land of landscapes and imaginary cities, enhanced by Marvin Black's dark, dense soundtrack. It is a cyberspace where the impossible is all too possible. Within this parallel world, a series of archetypes act, observe and comment, informed by a strong sexual sensibility. '..a mesmerising, sometimes hysterically funny, cinematic bricolage with a strong sexual and mostly gay sensibility'. - Cordelia Swann

MICHELLE MOHABEER
EXPOSURE
Canada, 1990, sound, colour, 8 mins, 16mm
"A searching, intimate dialogue between two lesbians of color reveals the intertwining of sexual and ethnic identity and common experience of racism and homophobia. Japanese Canadian writer Mona Oikawa and Afro Caribbean poet and activist Leleti Tamu share their reflections in this culturally rich film. Highlighted by inspiring photos, paintings, and a buoyant soundtrack."

"Affirming yet analytic, loving yet tough-minded...a dynamic approach to sexual and racial identity." - Kass Banning, CineAction!

EWAN MORRISON & ANGELA MURRAY
CLOSET
UK, 1994, 15 mins, video
A young policeman is deployed to observe and arrest men seen to be involved in illegal sexual activities in public places. His life is spent working between two places: both are lined with white tile; both have a toilet bowl and a spy hole; both exist in a long line of identical enclosures. One is a public toilet, the other a prison cell. In both places men watch other men. In the first place this is called voyeurism; in the second, surveillance.

CRAIG PHILP
JIM AND ERNIE
Canada, 1984, sound, B&W and colour, 27 mins, 16mm
"Jim and Ernie are a homosexual couple who have been together for over 26 years. Through on-camera interviews, old photographs and personal home movies, Jim and Ernie take us back to the beginning of their relationship. We share with them some of their struggles and how they managed to create a caring relationship over the years. Their story is highlighted with a touching holy union ceremony, uniting their love. Highly recommended for anyone interested in a greater understanding of human sexuality." - Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

LUTHER PRICE
SODOM
USA, sound, colour, 25 mins, 16mm
"Power, control, brutality – all are there, companians to lust and pleasure – even the sex and death equation whether related to AIDS or not… Sade and Bataille both explored the darker side of sex, as has Kenneth Anger. It seems to me that Luther Price has upped the ante. I see Sodom as part of a tradition whose precursors, perhaps, are Anger's Fireworks and Genet's Un Chant d'Amour. These films, now distanced by history, challenged received notions of sexual portrayal and were contoversial in their time. There have been few films that dealt with gay sexuality since."– Michael Wallin

STEVE REINKE
ANDY
Canada, 1997, 9 mins, video
Andy is a combination of a documentary portrait and an amateur porn movie. As Andy masturbates in his beautiful apartment, he describes, in voice-over, the process of and rationale for his decorating choices. An exercise in lifestyle anthropology.

STEVE REINKE
ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK SONG
Canada, 2004, 29 mins, video
Anthology of American Folk Song retools Harry Smith's "Anthology of American Folk Music". 'They had been unable to believe in the existence of terrorists. After all, none of them had discovered any repressed memories of terrorist abuse. They had focussed instead on the more immediate and real threat of serial killers, alien abductors and Satanic ritual abusers.'

ZACK STIGLICZ
ARISTOPHANES ON BROADWAY
USA, 1991, sound, colour, 9 mins, 16mm
The human voice a 'sensuous body' plays a meditative part in Aristophanes On Broadway. The narrator shares the tale of Zeus' angry splitting of the original form of human bodies into two pieces, and the subsequent search for each lover for its soulmate. The speech of Aristophanes (from Plato's Symposium) gives voice to the transcendent aspirations of all forms of love. Edvard Munch's idea that one spies upon the human soul in 'the negative image' motivates the film's visualization. - Z.S.

'...moving and visually mesmerizing.' - Chicago Filmmakers.

'The subversive power of this piece remains central to this seemingly lyrical visual study of the 1990 Gay Pride Procession in Chicago. Motion is slowed, image is inverted so we are actually watching a high contrast negative (you've never seen colours like this). The beauty of the visuals is striking as is the classical intentionality of the Speech of Aristophanes from Plato's Symposium.' - Shellie Fleming, Image Film and Video Center, Atlanta.

'The award for 'originality' went to Zack Stiglicz of Chicago, who used an amazing cutting technique on high contrast negative imagery for his Aristophanes on Broadway. This retold ancient Greek myth of how the sexes were differentiated is enacted in the context of a startling carnival pageant, the gay pride procession. Zack's poetry and voice are bold and declamatory and sustain the rapturous mood of Aristophanes' strange tale.' - 1991 National Poetry Association's Poetry Film Festival (San Francisco).

TANYA SYED
SALAMANDER
UK, 1994, ?, ?, 12 mins, 16mm and video
'Set in an urban landscape this film fragments conventional narrative into a playful, expressionistic nocturne which carries its 'lesbian subplot' with the power of a 10-ton truck. The excess of traffic, light, sound and movement creates a dynamic, transient reality. Sometimes we cannot place things, or people. Sometimes moments and people slip away. The images run over my eyes, fluid like water.' - T.S.

JERRY TARTAGLIA
ECCO HOMO
USA, 1989, sound, colour,7 mins, 16mm.
Ecco Homo (behold man) employs optically printed footage. Thanks to A.I.D.S. hysteria in America, all gay sexuality is once again considered to be essentially pornographic, politically incorrect, sinful or a public health hazard. Ecco Homo is a call to reclaim gay power.

First European Screening, Berlin Film Festival, 1990.

'Ecco Homo reclaims desire in the age of A.I.D.S...Tartaglia's an artist at the peak of his powers.' Vito Russo, The Advocate.
I am watching a segment of Genet's film, in which the guard is watching the men, and when he removes the gun from inside his jacket, he puts the gun in the mouth of one of the men and then I am watching two men kissing each other on the mouth and then I am watching homo sex and I am seeing men having homo sex and watching the guard having the gun having sex and watching the film with homo sex, I see the men and I watch how they have homo sex in the porno film which the cop said was Genet's film and the cop with the gun was porno and they said when Stonewall was with the cops and the gun, and the film was porno and they said Stonewall was porno and they said the men were not men and the women were not women, and the men with the women were not porno, and the film with the men kissing on the lips was porno and the cop who was watching the film was a doctor who was watching the film which was not safe porno because it was not safe to be`watching a film with a doctor who was a cop in a film of the men having sex which was porno when they said Stonewall was porno, which was not the film the desired to watch, when the film of desire was the film of men having homo sex in the film with the men, and this man, and this man, and their desire which was burning in the film, and the homo sex of the cop who was watching the police, who have the power, and the doctors, who are the men with the women, which is not porno, which is what they said was Stonewall, which was the film with the women and the men who were not the men with the women, which was not porno, when Stonewall was power which was personal and not porno when it was never really safe for porno which was in the film in which a cop was watching with a gun when the men were having sex with the men, and when personal desire is power when it is unsafe to be watching porno with a doctor who is not Stonewall and a cop who is not porno, who is watching men having sex with men, which is not safe if personal desire is power and the doctor with the power watches the cop in the film by Genet, which was not porno, and the doctor watches the power which is unsafe and the porno, which is the cop watching with the gun which is in the film which is Genet, who was Stonewall, which was not safe when desire is power, and the doctor and the power are watching us watch the film with the men and the homosex and the personal desire which is power in the film with the Stonewall homo sex, which is not the doctor and the cop, which is not porno, in the film with the strength of the person and the sex which is power in the film which is unsafe when the doctor is power and the person with the sex, when the men and the men have homo sex and desire the love which is in the film which was Stonewall which was not safe, which was power, which was in the film which is not safe to watch, when the doctor is the power with the cop, and the film which is not porno is safe, which is not Stonewall, and the men who love the men who desire in the film which is power, which IS Stonewall, are the men who are alive, which is power which is not safe, when desire is not safe, which is the doctor who is power with the cop, in the film which is Stonewall, which was not safe, which is power!

Personal desire is power. Reclaim our desire, reclaim our power.

Collective desire is power. Reclaim our desire, reclaim our power.

MARK VERABIOFF
CROSSING THE 49TH
USA, 1985, 10 mins, video
Mark Verabioff's work examines practices to draw out the meaning of individual experience and reflects social and political conditions. Crossing the 49th reasons with black humour that since there are 25 million homosexuals in the United States, and 23 million people in Canada, the two populations should change places...

MICHAEL WALLIN
THE PLACE BETWEEN OUR BODIES
USA, 1975, sound, colour, 33 mins, 16mm
'Michael Wallin's The Place Between Our Bodies, produced in 1975, offers an uncommonly explicit exploration of gay male sexuality, still raw and affecting more than ten years down the sex-radical road.' - Elizabeth Pincus, Gay Community News, Boston 1988.

'The Place Between Our Bodies (1975) seems to come from another planet, another epoch, in its frank and tender extrapolation of gay sexual hunger and the kindling of a first relationship. The film is stridently pre-AIDS---much more so than any mid-70's porno. This is partly because it is a personal film that discusses sexual hunger and love in a context that endows them with transcendent powers... Sexual love overcomes the plight of gay alienation and sexual hunger. And that is what begins to turn the film around, so that its most beautiful moments become its most painful. Wallin's indescribable expression during orgasm, and the enveloping tenderness with which he (unsafely) fucks his boyfriend, left me chilled with a sadness barely discernible beneath the usual tough skinned attempt - on my part, on everyone's.-.to endure.' - Todd Haines, Afterimage, December 1988.