GLR March-April 2026

Reichenbach’s 22-minute black-and-white film Last Spring (1954) stars real-life couple John Connolly— Wescott’s younger ex-lover—and Richard “Dick” Kush ner. The lovers live an idyllic rural life on a farm— Wescott’s New Jersey property—until Kushner’s charac ter leaves for New York, the gay metropolis, and both men must confront their anxieties about modern gay urban pleasures. The film is unusual for its unambiguous depic tion of male same-sex intimacy, for its technical sophisti cation, and for its avant-garde ambitions, featuring several extended, anxiety-induced dream sequences as Connolly tries to catch up to, reunite with, and save Kushner from the perils of urban temptation, while Kushner goads him to follow. The film also offers a particularly homophile vi sion of filmmaking, with its tender portrayal of gay love and its nuanced representation of queer desire. Throughout the early 1950s, Reichenbach also shot home movies documenting his encounters with beautiful men in picturesque settings across France, Italy, and the U.S. Evocatively titled Nus masculins (“Male Nudes”) by the Cinémathèque française, the surviving reel of vibrant Kodachrome film features several portraits of young men posing for the camera, some clothed and some nude, some alone and some in pairs. Whether sitting on the rocks of Capri, standing among the statues at the Stadio dei Marmi, walking on the streets of Paris, or cruising on a spring day in Central Park, Reichenbach’s images are exhilarating, haunting records of same-sex tenderness and friendship at a time when visible affection toward another man would have been regarded with great suspicion. Harold T. O’Neal’s home movie collection undoubtedly rep resents the largest output by a single filmmaker, but the GLBT Historical Society has preserved several other collections of home movies, including eight reels of film in the Empress Reba Col lection documenting 1960s drag performances, holiday parties, and a picnic at a secluded pool featuring more than a hundred men, tight speedos and briefs galore. The Lesbian Home Movie Project has also preserved more than a dozen collections of home movies shot by women like Ruth Storm, Margaret Whalen, and Loraine Sumner, documenting family events, weddings, holiday parties, vacations, gay pride parades, sports games, concerts, per formances, and much more. In all these instances, the activity of filmmaking was not only a means of creative expression or his torical documentation; it also served as a means of bringing peo ple together in their own collective self-fashioning. While it’s amazing how many of these films have survived, many more have been lost, or have yet to be recovered, or are currently at risk of disappearing. But it’s not too late to save them. Stu Maddux makes this case forcefully in his 2015 docu mentary Reel in the Closet , which features home movie footage from more than a dozen archives across the country, document ing dinner and pool parties, nightclub performances, drag shows, protests and parades, family visits and vacations, and holiday celebrations—proving that queer people led rich, happy, and ful filling lives even if they often had to do so in secret. Maddux’ in terviewees testify to these films’ unique historical value and chronicle the many challenges to preserving these kinds of ma terials, including neglect, physical decay, lack of resources, the difficulty of identifying anonymous film materials once they end

up on eBay or at estate sales and flea markets, and the discom fort of relatives who would rather discard and destroy their fam ily members’ films than let it be known that they were queer. Geoff Story encountered many of these challenges as he de veloped his own documentary about a gay home movie he pur chased at an estate sale thirty years ago. The 22-minute reel, shot at a private pool outside St. Louis around 1945, features some fifty men enjoying each other’s company in the summer sun and provides a rare glimpse of gay life in the Midwest. Story has spent the past eight years trying to identify the men in the film, or other queer elders who can speak about their experiences as gay men in the Midwest at mid-century. While he has been able to identify the filmmakers—Sam Micotto, a dog groomer, and Buddy Walton, a hairdresser—and some relatives have been willing to speak about their family members on camera, many others have turned down his requests because they don’t want to out their relatives. Story’s efforts to tell their story persist, and when completed the documentary will help preserve and shed light on an important chapter of queer life in America. More queer home movies and amateur films undoubtedly re main to be recovered and brought to light. Only last year, Jean Béranger’s Lafcadio , a fifteen-minute French gay avant-garde film from 1948, was rediscovered in the archives of the Wis consin Center for Film and Theater Research. We can all help preserve these films by advocating for their importance, by en suring that friends and elders in the community develop plans to donate their materials to an archive, and, perhaps most im portantly, by safeguarding our own moving images. We all need to be stewards of our shared legacy. And he won’t reach over to release the tension you hold in your shoulders, playing a tune of obliviousness to a major conversational chord. He won’t tell you he loves you, you. He sings a lovers praise in the same swift movement as a pat on the back, a linger if crowding your ears like cotton. If you manhandled a title bigger than the crunchwrap supreme you’re holding to the ground like you’ve seen that handsome butch do to other butches, sweat glistening from a phase-of-moon face. You’re in the Taco Bell parking lot with a handsome butch, hands stained with dust from the cracked shell, pieces falling like snowflakes. He offers you a napkin and it You’re in the Taco Bell Parking Lot With a Handsome Butch but you’re sure he meets your eyes as a bean burrito is passed towards, to, lands in your lap as gentle as a kiss L YDIA V ENUS K NOWLES

March–April 2026

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