The GDR Complex

In 1987 GDR citizen Mario Röllig was arrested in Hungary for attempting to flee the GDR. Nowadays he gives talks about his experiences. This portrait shows just how subjective and riddled with taboos attempts to interpret GDR history can be.

Sex/Life in L.A.

A look at the sex lives of the guys who make L.A. adult movies.

Menmaniacs: The Legacy of Leather

Two gay leather beauty pageants form the core of this German documentary. The events, the International Mr. Leather Pageant and the Mr. Drummer Pageant held in San Francisco and Chicago respectively, are filled with scads of strangely dressed leather aficionados. These leather men are seen sauntering down streets, and hotel corridors; some of them are interviewed. Also interviewed are former Mr. Leathers who discuss the inherent responsibilities of their titles and the groupies they attract.

Via Appia

Frank, a HIV infected former Lufthansa steward, goes back to Rio from Germany with a film crew to look for Mario, a young man with whom he had a one night stand. Before Mario departed the morning after, he left a message scrawled in soap on the bathroom mirror: 'Welcome to the AIDS club'. Frank and his director hire a fast talking hustler named José (Guilherme di Padua) to help them to find Mario who seems alway to have just left whenever they arrive. Via Appia is the nickname of a Rio district where male prostitutes hang out...

Cycles of Porn: Sex/Life in L.A., Part 2

Los Angeles in the year 2005: 19-year-old lads move through an apartment that has been equipped with webcams and looks like some sort of futuristic internet doll's house. Not-quite-so-young men fulfil their sexual dreams as protagonists in bareback productions. And, at private sex parties, almost every second guy has either taken part in a porn film or wants to. In 1997, I followed on camera the fortunes of a group of men who had chosen to wok - either artistically or commercially - with their bodies. This footage later become part of my 199...

Gerd Hansen, 55

In the short documentary GERD HANSEN, 55 Jochen Hick talks about an aging gay masseur and the times before AIDS. The film was premiered at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 1987 and received the Prize of the German Film Critics.