GAY SEX IN THE 70s - DVD
They took MDMA and danced the night away. If you were in the mood for pure sex, there were the bathhouses. And if total sleaze was your aim, there were the piers, the Anvil or Mineshaft, places where men simply wanted to have sex with other men with no pretence.
Gay Sex in the 70s is a stunning visual document of New York during the decade of gay liberation and sexual abandon following Stonewall. Gay men cruised the streets, frequented gay bars, and, of course, had loads and loads of sex everywhere. But only 12 years after Stonewall, this unprecedented era of sexual Freedom came to a close.
In 1969, the Stonewall riots in New York City sounded the opening bell of the Gay Pride movement in America, and for many gay men it offered an opportunity to come out of the closet and live their lives in the open for the first time. As the gay community sought to define itself, it's not surprising that sex, once furtive and approached with no small amount of fear and shame, suddenly became openly and publicly celebrated and sought after, and in a handful of American cities, the gay scene became the centre of a wildly celebratory orgy that lasted until 1981, when the discovery of Aids led many men to re-examine their sexual habits. Filmmaker Joseph Lovett, himself a gay activist who produced one of the first major investigative stories on Aids to be broadcast on American television, interviewed a number of men who survived the '70s for his documentary GAY SEX IN THE '70s, which offers a sometimes witty and sometimes rueful look back at the discos, bathhouses, underground clubs, and gay-friendly resorts which dominated the social and sexual scene of the day, as well as the stories of the men who sought to declare their new identities through sex.
70 mins, BBFC cert 18
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