It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives
Filmmaking on the Queer Frontier

West Germany / 1971 / 67'
In German with Chinese and English subtitles

Director: Rosa von Praunheim
Cast: Berryt Bohlen, Bernd Feuerhelm, Ernst Kuchling

Few films can claim to have started a revolution. Two years after West Germany decriminalised homosexuality, Rosa von Praunheim detonated this scabrous agit-prop fable on national television. Provincial Daniel arrives in Berlin and drifts through the gay subcultures, from bourgeois coupledom to cruising grounds, while a merciless voice-over flays gay men for their assimilation, self-hatred and apathy, demanding they come out and organise. The scandal was seismic: debates, walkouts, dozens of activist groups. Modern German gay liberation traces its birth to this film. Queer cinema as a Molotov cocktail, its closing cry endures: "out of the toilets, into the streets!"