1970s gay themed movies

The rise of New German Cinema coincided with the birth of gay liberation. Fassbinder films were included Fox and His Friends and Querelleas well as other well-known directors like Ulrike Ottinger and Monika Treut, the meat of the series relies on lesser-known work that shone a light on aspects of German life that have since disappeared.

It was a victim of tragic bad timing: its celebration of the liberating potential of casual sex, including encounters in public restrooms, was instantly dated by the onset of AIDS. Nothing starts from scratch. Praunheim recognized the danger stemming both from the virus itself and the resurgence in homophobia it led to, envisioning a near-future version of a leper colony.

Collectively written, it stars the director as a bathhouse owner who profits from allowing his gay customers to have unsafe sex while struggling with AIDS and his own homophobia. The aggressively tilted camera angles set the stage for an overriding mood of activist camp, with recurring appearances by a drag quintet.

Praunheim fought desperately against this possibility. In love with a man who lived in East Berlin, the film was intended as a way to get him out of the country.

Queer Kino: 1970s and ‘80s Gay German Arthouse Cinema

Thomas and Felix get along great and quickly become a couple. Felix has the ability to travel east to see him periodically, but the frequency of his visits makes the East German government suspicious. Thomas seeks a way out of his country, thinking up baroque schemes involving travel to Yugoslavia and finally decides to risk an escape via Prague.

The film has an unusual flavor, possibly looking more experimental than Speck originally intended. The circumstances under which it was made meant that shooting on East Berlin streets had to be done with a hidden Super-8 camera. Thus, the exteriors have an extremely grainy look.

Still, they can only express their love in private apartments. The military garb in which she and her band perform rhymes with a brief fantasy scene of the barracks earlier in the film. Crucially, the film emphasizes the tenderness between them, as they cuddle and talk for several minutes after sex.

Instead, it takes in the world Philipp starts exploring. In one of the final scenes, an elderly man sits down with Philipp, who is drunk and unhappy. He describes his experience being arrested by the Nazis during World War II and sent to a concentration camp. Gay men were freer legally in East Germany than the West after World 1970s gay themed movies II, where the Nazi law that criminalized homosexuality stayed on the books until Coming Out was the only gay-themed film produced in East Germany, and it took Carow years to get permission to direct it.

The idealism reflected in that scene is frayed at the edges: there are two episodes beforehand of violence in the subway. He exits near his home at the Marx-Engles-Platz stop. Carow may not have intended any symbolism in that choice of subway stops, even though it seems pointed.

The East German life it depicted was quickly on its way to becoming a period piece. Americans, in particular, tend to talk about queerness with a touch of presentist superiority. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

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