We’ve often commented on BGPS that any positive depiction of gay people on screen before the 1980s is rare, but what about a gay-friendly movie from 1919? Yep, it’s real and believed to be the earliest surviving cinematic work explicitly about LGBT people (although sadly only a 40-minute fragment of the complete work survives).
Now Outfest is teaming up with the UCLA Film & Television Archive to restore the film, Different From The Others, to ensure this incredibly rare piece of gay history is preserved for future generations.
Different From The Others (Anders Als Die Andern) was directed by Richard Oswald and co-written by famed psychologist Magnus Hirschfeld, who founded the German homosexual emancipation movement in 1897. It is one of a small group of gay-friendly movies made during Germany’s Weimar Era. However this was the only one that escaped destruction by the Nazis, during their purge of all artistic works they felt went against their ideas. Luckily for us, a 40-minute fragment of the movie was found in the Ukraine after the War.
The film is a sympathetic portrayal of a gay violinist and his relationship with his young protégé. The silent film openly criticized German laws that criminalised homosexuality and was also fairly forward-thinking in showing that social stigma was a major cause of suicide among gay men (at the time many presumed high suicide rates were another sign of gay people’s mental ‘degeneracy’). Its subject matter is believed to have sparked censorship laws that closed the door to LGBT cinema for half a century.
Outfest has now launched a Kickstarter campaign hoping to raise at least $5,000 towards the restoration, so if you fancy helping this important project, head over and pledge some cash. After restoring the film, the idea is to also create extra content designed to position the film as an invaluable teaching tool, showing the film’s historical significance. New prints will also be struck, so audiences around the world can be introduced to the film.
Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, commented at the Outfest Legacy Awards earlier this month (via The Advocate), “When the film was first shown in 1919, gay and lesbian audiences must have been amazed that a mainstream fiction feature film would portray their situation as a fact of nature, rather than as a perversion. By preserving these films, UCLA Film and Television Archive, with its partner Outfest, helps guarantee the long and difficult struggle for gay rights is reflected in the cinema … and will be available to future generations.”
It’s an amazing survival and its restoration is well worth supporting, so head over to Kickstarter.
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