the INQUEERY

If you are in New York this coming August 31st I recommend checking out this Gay Porn Cinema Event being conducted by the Museum of Sex.  It sounds interesting!  I am definitely going to stop by.

Pornography has emerged from seclusion, under the counter sales, and mail order inserts to becoming a multibillion dollar industry, reaching into and overlapping with mainstream media. Until the early 1970s, the presence of homosexuality in film was a rarity, but after the riots of Stonewall and the rise of gay liberation, their presence in film truly began to take root. On Monday August 31 at 7:30pm, come to the Museum of Sex and explore the evolution of gay porn cinema. Through film clips, dialogues, and question and answer interviews, scholar Jeffrey Escoffier brings to life the essence of this field. Focusing on New York centric directors, Jerry Douglas and Joe Gage, this presentation allows patrons to experience both a film montage of pivotal scenes as well as question the creators themselves.

Only a handful of porn directors are auteurs — cinematic masters– but Jerry Douglas and Joe Gage are among the select few. Both men were among the pioneers of the 1970s and both have continued to work into the twenty-first century. Douglas’ The Back Row was a highly commercial gay porn film. His award-winning films, More of a Man, Flesh and Blood and Buckleroos are recognized classics. Joe Gage’s trilogy, his first three movies — Kansas City Trucking Co., El Paso Wrecking Corp, and LA Tool and Die — are cult classics that helped capture a unique vision of masculine sexuality. After a 17 year hiatus, Gage returned to gay porn in 2001 and continued to produce unique visions of men having sex with men.

BIO: Jeffrey Escoffier writes on sexuality and gay history. He is the author of Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore (Running Press/Perseus Book Group, 2009) and American Homo: Community and Perversity (University of California Press, 1998) and edited Sexual Revolution (Thunder’s Mouth, 2003), a compilation of the most important writing on sex published in the 1960s and 70s.. He has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The Utne Reader, The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, the Journal of Homosexuality, and Qualitative Sociology. He taught at San Francisco State University, the University of California in Berkeley and at Davis, at Rutgers University, and at the New School University. He was a Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality for the last two years. For the last decade, he has worked in health media, communications and marketing in New York City.

Tickets for this event are $10.00 for students/members and $12.00 for adults.

The Museum of Sex is located at 233 Fifth Avenue @ 27th Street. For more information you can call them at 212-689-6337.