1960s - UPDATED: June 2024

62nd Birthday Footage (ca. 1962)

Kate Vogel

1962

Footage from the birthday of the wonderful Bet Van Beeran, who was an 'out' lesbian in Amsterdam from the 1920s onwards.

Adventures with Tony

?

1960s

USA / 3 mins
A remarkable series of fragments of home movie footage featuring a young butch on vacation with her father in New Jersey.

Alienation

Kang-Chien Chiu

1966

 Taiwan / 6 mins
This experimental short features a caterpillar crawling on a wall, a naked man seemingly masturbating, poetic captions and stills of crucifixion-like poses. Considered lost for 52 years, Alienation was found and restored in 2019. 

Epilogue / Siam

Tom Chomont

1968

USA / 6 mins
Filmmaker and curator Jim Hubbard states, “Chomont’s films offer a lyric depiction of the ordinary world.” Here, Chomont presents two portraits–one warm, and one cold.

Klitclique: In Pairs / KLITCLIQUE : Zu zweit 

Anna Spanlang

1968

Austria / 2 mins
From Laurel and Hardy, to Batman and Robin, Anna Spanlangs video clip uses imagery of famous pairs as the background for this obituary to the phallocracy and its male homosocial structure… “Women In” is an invitation to fight perceptions in the mainstream media and well as perceiving the art of two women as merely decorative accessories.

Queens at Heart

USA / 22 mins
A rare and poignant glimpse into pre-Stonewall queer life, Queens at Heart introduces Misty, Vicky, Sonja and Simone—four courageous trans women who candidly discuss their personal lives with a lurid male interviewer who claims to have spoken to "thousands of homosexuals” (and who clearly doesn’t understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity). The film covers a New York City drag ball and follows the women through their daily lives. They talk about their double-lives—going out as women at night but living as men during the day, and about how they take hormones and dream of "going for a change." One talks about avoiding the draft, another about her fiancé and another about the torment of childhood as an effeminate youth. Their candor and courage are a remarkable gift to the queers of the new millennium. Queens at Heart offers a vivid and compelling lens on how far we have come as a movement while giving a deep (and wildly entertaining) understanding of what it was like to be transgender at a very different time in history, more than sixty years ago. — Jenni Olson 

The Blue Rose

Chuck Renslow

1965

USA / 12 mins
This poetic film is an extension of Renslow's male physique photography of the period. By today's standards, this film is quite tame, however in 1965 films like this remained in a legal grey area, barely escaping obscenity laws. The film stars Steve Kotis as the Grecian shepherd lad, and Ralph Kleiner who is enchanted by the blue rose.