There’s a tendency to think gay rights started at Stonewall and before that, there was absolutely nothing. However before the riots on Christopher Street, various organisations in different countries laid the groundwork for the emergence of the gay rights battles. Whether it was the Mattachine Society in the US, the Minorities Research Group in the UK or the Swiss journal Der Kreis, there was social and political movement for gay people for several decades before 1969.
The new film, The Circle, looks at Der Kreis, which was the only gay publication in Europe to publish during the Nazi era (interestingly Germany had been home to several gay groups that had seen quite a lot of success in the Weimar era, but they were brutally suppressed once Hitler took over).
Here’s the movie’s synopsis: ‘Zürich in the mid 50’s: The young shy teacher Ernst Ostertag becomes a member of the gay organization DER KREIS. There he gets to know the transvestite star Röbi Rapp — and immediately falls head over heels in love with him.
‘Röbi and Ernst live through the high point and the eventual decline of the organization, which in the whole of Europe is seen as the pioneer of gay emancipation. Ernst finds himself torn between his bourgeois existence and his commitment to homosexuality, for Röbi it is about his first serious love relationship. A relationship which will last a lifetime.
‘The film looks back from the present to the time when the „Mother” of all European homosexual organizations had its high point to the time it slowly fell apart. While the repression against homosexuals became increasingly more intense in Zurich, two young and very different men fight for their love and — together with their friends — for the rights of gays.’
Following its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, the movie is currently screening at film festivals.
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