His childhood was divided between New York and LA, but upon graduating with a cinema studies degree from Oberlin in 2017, he felt called to the Windy City after several friends moved here for the queer community and relative lower cost of living.
Over the course of 19 jam-packed minutes, Hanson plays with the storytelling conventions of rom-coms, reality dating shows, and pornography to tell a comedically rock ‘n’ roll story about unrequited love and some of queer culture’s unspoken taboos. The title plays off the idea of “bros before hoes,” adding a subtle wink to the time-honored queer tradition of “experimenting” with a same-gender friend only to learn one person is experiencing their desires in a way the other isn’t-or rather, isn’t going to acknowledge after orgasm. When Billy begins dating Grace (Meadow Meyer), Elijah finds himself wrestling with what their secret ritual means. In it, Billy (Radcliffe Adler) and Elijah (Marten Katze) are two trans men who happen to enjoy jerking off together-but, like, no homo. It’s only gay if the swords touch-and Henry Hanson’s short film Bros Before is a whole arsenal of blades.
Sommelier Series (paid sponsored content).Wakefield Poole’s “Boys in the Sand” - Vintage Gay Adult FilmsĪt some point during the quarantine, a well-curated adult entertainment website approached me, offering access to peruse their voluminous catalog. Perhaps there are those who’d decline or scoff at the opportunity. I didn’t just watch porn all summer, of course, but I watched more porn than usual. I also worked from home, at seemingly all hours, and tried to keep up with the world’s deluge of conflict and disruption. I mourned a death in the family, along with the deaths of many I didn’t know. I masked and distanced, marched and protested, hiked through a forest and laid on a beach. The journey down the virtual video aisles of streaming platform PinkLabelTV began with a message from Jenni Olson, filmmaker, film historian, and co-director of the Bressan Project. For several years, Olson and the Bressan Project have worked to restore the films of pioneering gay filmmaker Arthur J. Bressan, Jr., including his landmark 1978 documentary Gay USA, chronicling the LGBTQ rights movement, and the wrenching 1985 drama Buddies, the first feature film to tackle the AIDS crisis.īressan himself succumbed to complications related to AIDS in 1987, following a prolific period in which the native New Yorker directed ten films in ten years. Two of them, Passing Strangers and Forbidden Letters, represent the plot-driven gay male erotica Bressan is better known for, and are the latest of his films to be restored by the Bressan Project.
#Short gay movies with nudity plusĪs of this August, both are available exclusively on PinkLabelTV, either streaming on-demand or with a PinkLabelTV PLUS subscription.įounded in 2013 by queer feminist producer and director Shine Louise Houston, the PinkLabel platform is a treasure trove of indie adult entertainment, with diverse titles grouped into several appealing channels. Practically all genders and tastes are celebrated in a collection spanning decades, up to some brand-new releases.
Lured, however, by the men, the mood, and the attitude of the sexually liberated ’70s and ’80s, I stuck with the PinkLabelTV Classics, billed as “vintage adult film from the silver and golden age of porn.” Bressan’s work was a highlight of my trip back in time, but Passing Strangers and Forbidden Letters were just the beginning. Robert Adams and Robert Carnagey in “Passing Strangers” Passing Strangers (1974)īressan has the audacity to open Passing Strangers, one of the few sexually explicit gay indies of the ’70s, with a grainy scene of straight sex - revealed to be playing onscreen at a porn theater.