Everything you could possibly want or need was available there including a pool, a gym, a massage parlour, a dancefloor, secret places and hideouts and, most importantly, plentiful sex.ĭrugs had a real role to play in creating the atmosphere of free love because they allowed people to lose their inhibitions and their fears and to be more adventurous. Men would check in and stay for the whole weekend.
A trip to the Baths was seen as a “vacation” and described as a trip to the “candy store”. This was open 24/7, seven days a week, and was a Pleasuredome. There is a particularly rich description of the St Marks Baths in New York. In addition to the public spaces, private spaces specifically catering for gay men rapidly developed, including bars, clubs, saunas and baths. There was a wide range of public spaces used by gay men to have sex, including the trucks, the piers and Central Park. Sex was a recreational activity and was great fun.Ĭruising carried on all the time, in everyday places like the streets and the subways. A time when they had “no worries”, a time of bliss, joy and self-discovery, when they were finally able to explore their sexuality openly, and when sex was readily available. The gay men featured in the documentary talked about how the 70s were a time of sexual freedom when they felt “free”. Things finally changed in the 1970s, with a move from repression to liberation, and the beginnings of the gay liberation movement. Homosexual men were institutionalised by their families, locked away in sanatoriums, and subjected to ECT treatment in an effort to cure them. If you were homosexual, you were regarded as abnormal and it was something to be ashamed of. We hear their stories and their memories and we get a real insight into their lives during this period.īefore 1969, homosexuality was not often spoken about and was something that tended to be hidden away.
The documentary is based on archive footage, photographs and the testimonies of gay men who lived in New York during the 70s. For gay men in New York, the 70s represented a time of unequalled sexual liberation and sexual freedom. Gay Sex in the 70s is a documentary looking at the gay men’s scene in New York between 1969, the time of the Stonewall riots and the beginnings of the gay liberation movement, and 1981, which marked the arrival of the AIDS crisis.
The Hunt – Denmark – EuroVisions of Cinema - 9 May, 2014.