Films That Fuck II: Californian Gay Pornotragedies
Genesis Cinema, London, 27 October 2025
The films in this programme both draw on the hold California has had over gay media, in particular gay porn, and use this to create a critical discourse around how this media is created and consumed.
Kalil Hadad’s Victim of Circumstance sees Scott and Brandon meet in the 1980s at an orphanage. Lured by a magazine, they make their way, some months apart, to the California they see depicted in its pages.Told through a hi-intensity assemblage of found material from gay porn videos and magazines of the period, some things altogether more unsettling come to emerge from amongst the images of the Sunshine State’s sun-kissed twinks.
William E Jones’ essay film Finished is a detective story and a love story, a film noir bathed in the sunlight of tapes. An unseen narrator looks into what happened to Alan Lambert, a porn performer who he’s taken rather a liking to. A proto-parasocial relationship forms as they discover Lambert’s suicide shortly after being told he was finished in the industry, aged 25. Through clips of Lambert’s appearances and footage related to his life, a portrait of two obsessions emerges: Lambert’s almost messianic visions of grandeur and Jones’ searching desire to re-animate his subject.
Victim of Circumstance | Kalil Haddad | Canada | 2024 | 22’
Finished | William E. Jones | USA | 1997 | 75’
Genesis Cinema, London, 27 October 2025
The films in this programme both draw on the hold California has had over gay media, in particular gay porn, and use this to create a critical discourse around how this media is created and consumed.
Kalil Hadad’s Victim of Circumstance sees Scott and Brandon meet in the 1980s at an orphanage. Lured by a magazine, they make their way, some months apart, to the California they see depicted in its pages.Told through a hi-intensity assemblage of found material from gay porn videos and magazines of the period, some things altogether more unsettling come to emerge from amongst the images of the Sunshine State’s sun-kissed twinks.
William E Jones’ essay film Finished is a detective story and a love story, a film noir bathed in the sunlight of tapes. An unseen narrator looks into what happened to Alan Lambert, a porn performer who he’s taken rather a liking to. A proto-parasocial relationship forms as they discover Lambert’s suicide shortly after being told he was finished in the industry, aged 25. Through clips of Lambert’s appearances and footage related to his life, a portrait of two obsessions emerges: Lambert’s almost messianic visions of grandeur and Jones’ searching desire to re-animate his subject.
Victim of Circumstance | Kalil Haddad | Canada | 2024 | 22’
Finished | William E. Jones | USA | 1997 | 75’
