Gay Sex in the 70s is very sad in retrospect - Film - Arts - Evening Standard
       

Gay Sex in the 70s is very sad in retrospect

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"Socially, sexually, spiritually it was bliss", says an interviewee of the burgeoning gay culture in New York during the post-Stonewall, pre-Aids era.

Joseph Lovett’s scrapbook of that time, which contains archival footage, clips of gay porno and copious interviews, does not pretend to explain what happened when gay people were suddenly able to throw off hundreds of years of inhibition.

Not, at least, until the final reel and the advent of Aids, which decimated so many of those who had thought there was no penalty for the new freedoms. The film is personal, nostalgic and celebratory as bathhouse orgies, sexual engagements in Central Park and fun in Studio 54 are recalled. But somehow it is all rather sad in retrospect.

Gay Sex In The 70s

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