The Pleasure Garden: Queer Visionary Films of the '60s and '70s

***FREE***

Presented with a discussion by Prof. Bernard Welt of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at The George Washington University - author of  Mythomania: Fantasies, Fables, and Sheer Lies in Contemporary American Popular Art.

Before Brokeback Mountain, there was Lonesome Cowboys. 

Before Hedwig, there was Thundercrack!

Before Looking, there was Normal Love. 

 Avant-garde short films by gay artists, as formally daring as they were sexually explicit, redefined eros as well as film in the revolutionary decades of the 1960s and ‘70s. Queer cinema pioneers such as James Broughton and Jack Smith expanded the frontiers of do-it-yourself experimentation and expression. Films by Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger, appearing first in the queer niches of ‘60s culture, rapidly influenced rock music, fashion, and mainstream cinema. There’s not much in queer independent film—or indie film, period—that wasn’t done first in the pioneering films of this era. 

The Pleasure Garden series offers a rare opportunity to see these genre- and gender-bending short films. 

PROGRAM TWO:

Tuesday June 23 from 7:30pm - 9:30 pm: Confessions

Queer cinema has filtered autobiographical impulses in an expressionist mode. The films of Curt McDowell, James Broughton, Fred Halsted, and Peter de Rome laid gay sexual life bare—but often in a context of lyricism, fantasy, and seductive humor.