Home movie enthusiasts, take note: Those old videos could be worth some big money one day!
Rare footage of a mock gay wedding on Fire Island recently sold for a whopping $980 on eBay. The footage, taken sometime in the 1960s, shows two men–one in a wedding dress–undergoing a marriage rite before a group of joyful onlookers.
The same reel also shows two men in speedos wrestling, men in swimsuits hanging out by a pool, and another scene of men engaging in some kind of… bondage play?
Before you get too excited, the eBay listing specifies that the film contains no footage of sexually explicit acts. It also states that the origins of the footage is unknown, though the Fire Island locations are clearly identifiable.
“While you do see some women & children the bulk of the 3in 8mm home movie features gay men at the beach,” the listing reads. “There is no nudity no sexual acts this is a HOME MOVIE.”
Related: WATCH: Some of the ‘trouble’ you can get up to in Fire Island
The footage in question offers a rare look into the pre-Stonewall era of LGBTQ life. At the time, queer people could only live openly in a handful of pockets around the country, as gay sex was outlawed. Even the insinuation that someone could be gay could destroy a career.
Fire Island became one of those havens for LGBTQ people thanks to its isolated location and beach scenery. It remains very popular with queer vacationers today.
Given the danger in filming queer people living openly–and the danger in the recording said activity–the historical value of the footage in question is very high. Here’s hoping somebody who paid for it gets it digitized and released to the public.
Related: Footage of a gay pool party in 1945 has surfaced online and it’s pretty incredible
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Openminded
It’s cool that this film was discovered before it deteriorated. Much of the 8MM film is reaching it’s expiry date. This must have been stored in fairly ideal conditions and hopefully the new owner will re-archive it on modern media.
Joseph1971
I think it was wonderful that it has survived time and possibly can be reinstated with modern technology. It makes me sad to wonder if any of the guys photographed are still living….. AIDS was a decade away or so but still it makes me think about who survived from that time period.
thegayboomer
Hi Joseph…I was there and I’m still alive. Many of us are who didn’t get AIDS until the later 80s or early 90s, when the better class of Protease Inhibitors were introduced. But my lover and entire circle of friends from San Francisco did die. I try to describe the joy of gay liberation felt in that city when I arrived on Castro Street in 1980 and the subsequent devastation of AIDS in my newly published memoir, “A Gay Boomer Story.” It’s available on Amazon. My author name is J.A. Giarelli.
mz.sam
Great upload…thanks for the historical flashback being that I’ve never been there.
mateo
WAIT, WAIT, WAIT. Before everybody gets going about “preserving our history”, etc., I need to point out that the first group of four photos (the guys frolicking in the surf) WAS shot on Fire Island, but as part of a COMMERCIAL FILM directed by Christopher Larkin and called “A Very Natural Thing”– which ran in first-run movie theaters at the time it was made (1974). Nothing about it is “8MM home movie”. The photos are easily identifiable, as they constitute the film’s final scene and as I recall, there’s also some freeze-framing going on. I don’t doubt that the other photos are actually of a gay wedding from the same period (and again I think, based on the clothing, that we’re talking early 70s as opposed to the 60s, but that’s just a hunch on my part). BTW, “A Very Natural Thing” can be found on Youtube, so watch it and as the saying goes: prove me wrong.