Charles Koehler  0:02  
I'm Charles Koehler, and this is Lambda Reports, a weekly program by and for the St Louis lesbian and gay community. The world forms its views of the often invisible world of lesbians and gays by what it sees and what it hears and one of the most powerful means of showing this invisible world to the rest of society is through the movies. Our guest today is Dr Silverscreen. Welcome to Lambda Reports.

Dr. Silverscreen  0:33  
Thanks, Charles. It's good to be back again.

Charles Koehler  0:34  
Good. For nearly eight years Dr. Silverscreen has written a column on movies and television for the Lesbian and Gay News Telegraph, which is a regional monthly newspaper published in St. Louis. He's also broadcast reviews on radio station KDHX and also the second full week of each month, Dr. Silverscreen can be heard on the St. Louis Gay and Lesbian Action Line, a telephone message service sponsored by Challenge Metro at 367-0084. First of all Dr. Silverscreen, can you give us an overview of how foreign filmmakers have depicted lesbians and gays over the years?

Dr. Silverscreen  1:20  
I assume you're asking that in contrast to mainstream American movies, Hollywood movies?

Charles Koehler  1:25  
Right. Why don't we today talk about foreign and independent filming? 

Dr. Silverscreen  1:30  
Well, okay, good. Because foreign films have a long history of presenting gay and lesbian characters going back all the way to 1919, 

Charles Koehler  1:40  
That's quite a ways. 

Dr. Silverscreen  1:41  
With a, yes, a silent film from Germany called "Anders ahls die Andern," which is usually translated as different from the others, or different from the rest, which has a sympathetic gay character who is blackmailed by a sleazy character and who is intended to get our sympathy and and the film actually has a message at the end about about treating people with dignity and all citizens having their rights so and about 10 years after that, also from Germany, came a film which was a groundbreaker in a way, called Pandora's Box. It was by a very famous German filmmaker named G.W. Pabst, presented the first lesbian character, who was called the Countess Geschwitz, and she was an admirer of the of the central character in the film Lulu played by Louise Brooks, and she is presented as a sympathetic character. So it goes back a long ways. Consequently, I think that in foreign films and European films, gay and lesbian characters are not always presented as being strange or unusual. Not that that never happens. It does happen sometimes, of course, but Well, I think, for example, of a film like Day for Night in 1973 by Francois Truffaut in witch which has to do with making a film and in which a handsome leading man who is now middle aged, played by Jean Pierre Romain, turns up on the set of the film with a young man who was obviously his lover, and nobody seemed shocked or surprised. And the women all talk about what a wonderful lover this actor is on the screen. It reminds you of Rock Hudson. But of course, at a time when Rock Hudson would never have talked about such a thing, or anyone else for that matter, because this was, this was in the early 70s. And lately, of course, we've seen in the 70s and in the 80s a whole blossoming of films from a variety of countries that deal with gay and lesbian subjects and have gay and lesbian characters. It's hard to know where to start. I'll just pick a couple of examples from a whole bunch of different countries. 

Charles Koehler  4:28  
So you have quite a few there. 

Dr. Silverscreen  4:30  
The film, well, I just jotted some down I was with trying to remember them. I think of a film like Victim from England. This is 1961 directed by Basil Dearden, which was very sympathetic to gay men who were being blackmailed because of the laws in England. That starred Dirk Bogarde, by the way, or a film like the L-Shaped Room, directed by Brian Forbes that was in 62 in which you have a black musician who is gay and an aging vaudeville actress who is a lesbian, and they are very positive characters. Or think about Sunday, Bloody Sunday from 1971 by John Schlesinger, in which we have a a gay doctor who has a young male lover, who has a woman lover, and which was considered something of a shocker in this country, especially when the doctor kissed his lover. Now we have also, well, I should mention that Germany, of course, had an openly gay director who was one of the outstanding young film directors of his time in Reiner Fasbender, and you see a film of his like Fox and His Friends, which also starred Fassbender about a gay character from the lower classes who is used, victimized by a lover from the upper classes. And the fact that they're gay is almost incidental. It's really more of a class struggle problem, but there's no hesitation in showing them as being gay. Now, of course, we have a famous Spanish filmmaker who was openly gay, Pedro Almodovar, who has made a whole series like a film a year in the last six or seven years, of films, some of which have gay characters, Frank Riplow's Taxi zum Clo from Germany in the early 80s, just outrageous depiction of of all the sexual aspects of a gay man's life, One Hermosillo from from Mexico, and Donya Herlinda and her on, about a mother who wants her son to marry A woman so that she will have grandchildren, but does not mind the fact that her son is homosexual and also has a male lover, and invites the male lover to come and live with them. And of course, the films that some of the films that Stephen Frears has directed in England recently, like My Beautiful Laundret And Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and Prick up your Ears and prick up your ears, of course, being about Joe Orton, the gay playwright of the 60s and films by Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, like Bostonians and Morris. So we see a lot of gay characters represented, for the most part, positively and realistically in a lot of the foreign films now, even even in comedies.

Charles Koehler  7:54  
Well, if we take a look at American independent films, how did they compare with with the foreign films and their depiction of lesbians and gays are even in terms of numbers.

Dr. Silverscreen  8:06  
Well, we first start seeing independent feature films, as opposed to the shorter underground films in the late 60s, and we see a movie like A Very Natural Thing in 7… in 73 let's say which was an independent film that, it seems recent now, to say 73, but it was the first independent film that depicted gay men, that wasn't a porno film, that was a real love story involving gay men. In the 80s, we've had a whole series of independent films depicting gay characters. John Sales' Liana in 83 is one of my favorite depictions of lesbian character. Waiting for the Moon in 86 about Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas by Jill Godmillow, a number of women filmmakers, incidentally, who are making these films. Derek Jarman's Caravaggio, which looks at the life of the famous late Renaissance painter in terms of how his gay sexuality affected his his art. Parting Glance is a wonderful film shot in New York by Bill Sherwood in 1986. Well, there're a whole bunch goes on and on. I think, I think we oughtn't to forget, also, as we're talking about American independent films, about the documentaries. I mean, 

Charles Koehler  9:38  
Right, I was just about to ask about documents. Yeah. 

Dr. Silverscreen  9:41  
Yeah, documentaries made about gay and lesbian people because heaven knows mainstream are not going to make accurate or even any documentaries. 

Charles Koehler  9:52  
Any examples pop into mind? 

Dr. Silverscreen  9:53  
Oh, yes. Arthur Brissen's films Abuse in 1983 and Buddies, which was the first narrative film about AIDS in 85 a pioneer in this, I would say is Word Is Out in 1977 by the Mariposa Film Group, in which gay men and lesbians talk about what it's like Silent Pioneers by Lucy Weiner in 1985 about older gays and lesbians. A wonderful film, excellent before Stonewall in 1985 by Greta Schiller, which is an hour and a half documentary about what gay life in the United States was like before 1969 and of course, everybody knows about The Times of Harvey Milk in 1985 which won an Academy Award as Best Documentary, quite, quite a these were all films made on a shoestring with grants, a lot of grant money that took, you know, years to dig up, small budgets, limited facilities, but excellent work.

Charles Koehler  10:56  
Well, since these foreign and American independent films are probably not very easy to come by. What? What places would you recommend going to see… Well… these, these films presented?

Dr. Silverscreen  11:13  
The older ones, of course, fortunately now a good number of those are available on video cassete, and the larger rental stores will have those. At Our World Too,  St. Louis's gay and lesbian book and gift shop at 11 South Vandeventer, they have a nice, small collection of films on videotape of special interest to the lesbian and gay community. Sometimes you can catch some of the older films at university film showings 

Charles Koehler  11:43  
such as Webster? 

Dr. Silverscreen  11:45  
Webster has an excellent series for both older and right up to date, very, very recent films. 

Charles Koehler  11:53  
That's Webster, university, out of town listeners. 

Dr. Silverscreen  11:56  
That's right, and as well as other schools and commercially, of course, there's the High Point Theater at Skinker and McCausland in St Louis, and there's the Tivoli Theater on Delmar University City.

Charles Koehler  12:10  
Great, great. So there are a number of different places that these films can be seen. Where can people go to or what books would you recommend to our listeners to to read, to learn more about these films?

Dr. Silverscreen  12:21  
Well, for from the library, you can probably find some of the books of Parker Tyler, who was really the first openly gay film critic and in the 60s and 70s, was writing books with titles like Sex, Psyche, Etcetera in the Film, an underground film, a critical history. And in 1972 72 he did a really good book called Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality in the Movies. And then in the 80s, for the 80s, of course, Vito Russo's well known book The Celluloid Closet, which came out in 1981 and which was augmented in 1987 by an additional chapter on more recent films. Very good source,

Charles Koehler  13:05  
Great. Well, just in the 45 seconds we have left, what does the future look like for independent and foreign filmmakers?

Dr. Silverscreen  13:13  
Goes in cycles. It seems that some periods, a lot of money is available and independent films are seen in great number, then there seems to be a respite, and there seems to be more of them coming out again. But I think we can look forward to seeing more interesting films from Europe now and even South America and from American independence.

Charles Koehler  13:39  
Great. So we have quite a bit to look forward to in the in the near future and in the distant future too. I hope, well, that's that's all the time we have for today. Unfortunately, there's so many other topics we want to cover, but I'd like to thank Dr. Silverscreen for being our guest today, and I'd like to remind our listeners that some of the films and books we refer to are available locally through Our World Too at 11 South Vandeventer, their phone number is 533-5322, that's 533-5322, and also, we encourage you to patronize the Tivoli theater at 6350, Delmar in University City, and the High Point theater at 1001 McCausland in St Louis, both of these local theaters, as well as university, or rather, Webster University and other college universities have been supportive in showing lesbian and gay related films until next time. This is Charles Koehler for Lamda Reports. Tune us in same time next week.

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