Gay Male Lifestyles

1981-06-28
Sound
38m

Gay men discuss sexuality, masculinity and relationships in a documentary filmed just before the outbreak of AIDS.

From clubbers at Heaven and cruisers on Hampstead Heath to academics and journalists, gay men offer their candid views on sex and relationships. They give a brief history of cruising, rue the dashed hopes of Gay Lib, and, most interestingly, critique the goal of emulating the traditionally masculine ideal of the heterosexual man, a self-loathing trait still prevalent among gay men today.

There's great poignancy to the interviews with the liberated and proudly promiscuous men seen in this documentary, shot a couple of years before the AIDS epidemic ravaged the community and radically altered representations of gay men in the media. It includes excellent interviews with erotic illustrator Oli Frey, art historian and later AIDS activist Simon Watney, and wry magazine editor Roger Baker. This intelligent and admirably unsensational exploration of homosexual men’s sexuality was filmed for Gay Life, London Weekend Television’s landmark series dedicated to LGBT topics.

Editor of FORUM Roger Baker and erotic illustrator Oliver Frey are
interviewed, as the programme discusses casual sex and gay men.

Queer Britain

This colourful and challenging collection explores screen representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lives over the past century.

British cinema boasts a long history of carefully coded queerness, but for much of the 20th century explicit depictions of gay life in drama or documentary were more or less taboo. Gay men were subject to vicious state-sanctioned persecution, while lesbians were socially ostracised and the transgender community ignored and misunderstood. Cinematic and small-screen breakthroughs in the 1950s and 60s played their part in the public debate. Finally acting on the recommendations of the Wolfenden Committee a decade earlier, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act partially decriminalised male homosexuality in England and Wales, between two men over 21, in private. As those caveats suggest, the legislation remained problematic. But it was a step forward, paving the way for further battles - some yet to be won. From early glimpses of 'queer' characters, this collection charts the path towards '67 and beyond, through responses to the AIDS crisis to diverse reflections on queer life today.