Tearoom (William E. Jones, 2007)

[jesus the mexican boi]

Jones' most accessible movie is a video doc on Morrissey's Latino following, Is It Really So Strange? But his recent Tearoom, playing at the Whitney in NYC through early June, looks interesting in a Frederick Wiseman-is-hiding-in-the-mens'-room way.

Tearoom consists of footage shot by the police in the course of a crackdown on public sex in the American Midwest. In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio Police Department photographed men in a restroom under the main square of the city. The cameramen hid in a closet and watched the clandestine activities through a two-way mirror. The film they shot was used in court as evidence against the defendants, all of whom were found guilty of sodomy, which at that time carried a mandatory minimum sentence of one year in the state penitentiary. The original surveillance footage shot by the police came into the possession of director William E. Jones while he was researching this case for a documentary project. The unedited scenes of ordinary men of various races and classes meeting to have sex were so powerful that the director decided to present the footage with a minimum of intervention. Tearoom is a radical example of film presented “as found” for the purpose of circulating historical images that have otherwise been suppressed.

[Adam]

For those of you in Los Angeles, I'll be screening it at Los Angeles Filmforum on June 8.

Although it's not really a new film. It's a pretty straight playing of an old film. But of course recontextualized.

[jesus the mexican boi]

The movie sounds fascinatingly like a companion piece to this remarkable book published in 1975.

There's a book of the film available as well, and it references the Humphries book (which in turn references the footage -- click on INSIDE COVER on the link page) -- how meta is that?