Nitrate Kisses

Barbara Hammer's 1992 American film searches for a history that was never recorded. The narrative asks why there is so little documentation of gay lives and proceeds through decayed strips of film. The film records four couples. People of different ages and different bodies are shown together, with archive material, fragments of banned films and readings from documents cut between them. Hammer worked long in experimental cinema and this is her first feature. The narrative is not linear; sound and image run separately, and the film presents the keeping of a record as itself a political act. Who it's for: those who follow experimental cinema and queer history. Who it's not for: viewers uncomfortable with explicit sexuality; the film shows it directly.