It’s considered by many to be one of the first examples of gay imagery in film, and a reminder that homosexual representation has been with the medium from the very beginning. While there’s nothing to outright suggest that these men were romantically involved or attracted to each other during the roughly 20-second length of their pas de deux, there is nothing that contradicts that notion either. It’s known as “The Dickson Experimental Sound Film,” and dates back to 1895, the same year movies were born. It was an experimental short made by William Dickson, designed to test syncing up moving pictures to prerecorded sound, a system that he and Thomas Edison were developing known as the Kinetophone. But this brief footage is not so ancient that you can’t clearly make out two men, waltzing together, as a third man plays a violin in the background.
Sometimes when reviewers want to put down a movie they'll say it seems like a film school project, but if these short films are typical, the kids are doing better work than the guys who run Hollywood.It’s grainy, faded, and, given the clip is now 125 years old, more than a little worse for wear. I noticed that several of these films identify themselves as film-school projects, at least two from USC. Saying that about any movie is a serious compliment. My only complaint about "Shaving the Castro," an extremely short documentary about a barber shop, is that it was over much too soon. "Safe Journey" is similar to "Touched" in its bittersweet bringing together of an apparently mismatched younger and older man, but there's enough originality in both films that they don't seem at all like clones. "Masturbation" is a little predictable, and not particularly original in parodying 1950s school hygiene films, but it is funny, the only one of these films that had me laughing out loud more than once. It's clever and fast-paced, and the closing credits are the best I think I've ever seen, extraordinarily creative and as much fun to watch as the film itself. I even enjoyed "10 Pesos" a lot some other viewers evidently found it boring and irrelevant, but I liked it. I assume, though, that he really must be older than he looked, and the story is original and delightful, particularly his encounter with the guys in drag. He's supposed to be in middle school, but he doesn't look any older than about nine.
Near the other end of the age spectrum is "Burl's," in which the lead actor looks so young it made me a little uncomfortable. What some have called the "stiff" performance of the lead actor just seemed to me like the way a real person, not an actor, might really be in such a situation. Sure, "Touched" is a middle-aged gay man's fantasy that would never happen in a million years, but it's surprisingly fresh and lovely anyway, sweet, sad, and genuinely touching. But the other six movies on this DVD are gems, the most consistently good and diverse collection of short gay films I've come across in a while. (The cat torture is what bothered me, by the way, and the relentless unfunniness of everything that happened-not the fact that they were screeching queens, whom I usually like.) I fast-forwarded through the last third of that piece of garbage to see if it got any better, and it didn't. I don't deny such people's right to exist and make movies-I just don't enjoy their company. It's called "Gaydar" and it's about-and possibly by and for-screeching queens who think it's funny to torment a pet cat (over and over) until it hisses (over and over) and finally runs away (That's not the central story, by the way, but it's what I remember).
The very, very bad one is the one that some people like best.