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Boys Life: The Complete Collection-- 20 Short Films about Love, Life, and Liberation
Strand Releasing
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Contemporary gay film culture doesn't really lend itself to retrospection-- or introspection, for that matter. There are so many gay-themed films these days-- many released right to DVD, so we don't even know they exist until they turn up on Netflix or in the local gay bookstore. Amidst the plethora, their accessibility is simply taken for granted by most people. Quite a switch from even a decade ago-- never mind 25 years ago-- when the release of a new gay or lesbian film constituted a semi-major event.

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But what has also changed is not the quality of the films-- there are plenty of bad films then and now, as well as good ones-- but also a sense of history and context. As much as some people (well, me) might bemoan the terribleness of Another Gay Movie or Sloppy Seconds, they are not unusual in their badness. Think of Kiss Me Guido, a terrible movie that is now almost a decade old and felt tired back then. Vito Russo, in his groundbreaking 1981 The Celluloid Closet, provided us with a workable history of gay films. But a quarter-century of gay film later, we have very little sense of that history now. It's not just the question whether in the past decade gay films are getting better or worse-- as in Hollywood, there's a steady stream of both. But how are their themes changing? How do their sensibilities mutate over time. Are they becoming more sophisticated? How do they reflect changing times and mores?

Boys Life: The Complete Collection offers a snapshot view of what's happened to gay-male films at least over the past decade. The first collection in this series of gay-themed shorts-- some of which had played gay film festivals across the country-- was released in 1995. An immediate hit, the next four collections emerged over ten years, with Boys Life 5 appearing last year. Watching the entire collection in chronological order both entertains and edifies. It's like a time capsule-- or, given that there are 19 films here, maybe we should say it's more like a time-release capsule-- revealing social changes and the shifts in gay sensibilities.

Funerals to weddings

Many of the films hold up beautifully. Disc number one sets the stage. Its three films-- Robert Lee King's "The Disco Years," Raoul O'Connell's "A Friend of Dorothy," and Brian Sloan's "Pool Days"-- are sweet, sexy, and knowledgeable about the pain of coming out. If "Disco Years" bears resonances of an after-school special and "Pool Days" feels more like a sketch for a longer film than a complete short in itself, nonetheless they're both fresh and witty. They glow with a certain new-found innocence of the mid-1990s when the deadly pall of the AIDS epidemic was (because of better drugs) lifting, and gay art was starting to reflect, rather than imminent death, the less complicated affairs of young men who worried about finding a boyfriend.

But it is Boys Life 2 that really shines, with terrific intelligence and talent. Tom DeCerchio's "Nunzio's Second Cousin" is a brilliant drama about a closeted gay cop (played by Vincent D'Onofrio) who takes a terrifying interest in a teenaged, possibly closeted, gay-basher. DeCerchio's film is funny, frightening, and unnerving-- and all in 18 minutes. The same could be said of Mark Christopher's "Alkali, Iowa," a 21-minute meditation on secrets in a Midwestern family. They may be miniatures, but these two completely serious films count among the best gay cinema, and are a shift away from the on-the-sleeves joyousness in Boys Life 1.

While Boys Life 3 and 4 are fine-- Jason Gould's "Inside Out" is an odd, weirdly fascinating take on being the gay son of Barbara Streisand, and Alan Brown's "O Beautiful" is a lovely film-- as collections they are not remarkable. But Boys Life 5 regains the full strength of 1 and 2. Adam Salky's and Davis Brind's "Dare" is a lovely piece of romantic fluff, reminiscent of "Pool Days" or "The Disco Years." But it's Eytan Fox's "Time Off" that's the main event here. Similar to his award-winning 2002 film Yossi and Jagger (both are set in the Israeli army), "Time Off" resonates with complicated emotion.

While it's premature-- at least from this collection-- to say that during the past decade gay films have seen a recognizable growth in maturity of content and style, you can say almost all these 18 films are worth watching-- many more than once. So if you despair about gay art after seeing the latest horrible homo comedy at your local independent theater, Boys Life: The Complete Collection won't disappoint.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com