An important video from a moment in William E. Jones’s career

4th August 2020, 11:53 pm

VHS cover of Men of the Balkans, 1997, Directed by Jean-Noël René Clair, 90:00 minutes

“In the mid-1990s, I worked in a video store and saw the release of a wave of gay adult videos shot in Eastern Europe. They were products of a crude imperialist enterprise: cheap and nasty looking, with an atmosphere of coercion and cultural misunderstanding pervading them. Customers adored these videos, and expressed their breathless admiration whenever given the chance. The moment I saw the cover of Men of the Balkans, the first gay porn film shot in Bulgaria, I knew I had found a subject for a video. With little money or leisure time, I couldn’t travel to Eastern Europe to make a documentary; instead, I examined the internal evidence of the videos themselves. I found more than enough to inspire a work.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Firsthand: William E. Jones – The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography” ONLINE

5th Aug 2020 – 26th Aug 2020 @ All Day –                   Over the course of 30 years, William E. Jones has produced a genre-defying body of work that includes films, videos, photographs, and texts. He alternately employs research, critique, autobiography, fiction, and appropriation to offer bracing – and often controversial – reassessments of the historical record. The […]

Published: 4th August 2020

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