HOMOSEXUALITY IN experimental FILM: THE 1960s
Christmas on Earth (1963)
Dir. Barbara Rubin
Perf. Anonymous
runtime: 29 minutes
USA
![Picture](/uploads/1/8/0/6/18060971/6338387.jpg)
Barbara Rubin’s 1963 film is a celluloid documentation of an orgy / happening in a private apartment in New York. The film features heterosexual, homosexual and lesbian intercourse in explicit, hardcore footage. The film however, was not made as pornography but as a work of transgressive art intended to be shown at further cultural happenings, concerts and get-togethers. The movie was used in a way to compliment or heighten an artistic experience and to interact with the surroundings of the screening, lending a layer to the film that a traditional presentation would lack. Further experimentation with form and representation is made when Barbara Rubin would not only project the film on living bodies, but would also use double projection and project two images on top of each for visual effect, in many instances drawing juxtapositions between male and female sexual anatomy. Different light filters and tinting add to the psychedelic imagery of the film and help to create an almost hypnotic, altered state in the viewer. The extremely explicit images of homosexual male intercourse, including graphic anal sex makes this film significant to the progression of not only homosexual representation in avant-garde cinema, but the furthering of real sex and sexuality in film into the realm of art. That the film was made in the early sixties makes it not only relevant as an early example of homosexual sex in cinema, but part of a greater societal revolution, the sexual revolution and the drastically changing attitudes towards sex in North American culture.
Blow Job (1963)
Dir. Andy Warhol
Perf. DeVeren Bookwalter and Willard Maas
runtime: 41 minutes
usa
![Picture](/uploads/1/8/0/6/18060971/6768047.jpg)
This Andy Warhol directed work consists of 41 minutes with a film rate of 16 frames per second of a close-up on a man’s face as he receives oral sex. The camera never waves from the face of the young man and is filmed in a static shot. Though the most explicit sexual content of this film is its title, it is a significant film not only in the history of homosexual representation and film but also the representation of authentic male pleasure and the admiration and fantasy surrounding the sexual experiences of a man without a female present. That the individual performing the oral sex on the young man is a man gives it homosexual content, but that is not entirely the point of the film. The audience is drawn into the pleasure experienced by the man on camera, and is either intrigued or aroused by what they see, be it through lust or vicarious identification. That the vessel for their pleasure is a man gives the male dominated medium of film a homoerotic subtext regardless of the sexual act performed off of camera. That the sexual act is not shown can be seen as a commentary on sexual representation and pleasure. What separates avant-garde or arthouse films that contain real sexual acts from pornography? If there is actual sex occurring but never visible, where does the work fit? Here, a work of art is made of a film that consists only of a minimalist recording of a sexual act. It is interesting to note the power of representations of sensuous pleasure alone and how the fact that “real” acts are occurring gives it more gravity as we move on to more explicit material in the future that contains real sex.
NOTABLE FILMS:
1963 - Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger)
1963 - Blonde Cobra (Ken Jacobs)
1963 - Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith)
1964 - Chumlum (Ron Rice)
1965 - Dream A40 (Lloyd Reckord)
1965 - Dirty (Stephen Dwoskin)
1969 - Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto)
Mainstream:
1961 - Victim (Made in the UK) 1967 - Reflections in a Golden Eye
1968 - The Killing of Sister George
1968 - The Lion in Winter
1963 - Scorpio Rising (Kenneth Anger)
1963 - Blonde Cobra (Ken Jacobs)
1963 - Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith)
1964 - Chumlum (Ron Rice)
1965 - Dream A40 (Lloyd Reckord)
1965 - Dirty (Stephen Dwoskin)
1969 - Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto)
Mainstream:
1961 - Victim (Made in the UK) 1967 - Reflections in a Golden Eye
1968 - The Killing of Sister George
1968 - The Lion in Winter