Ahead of his 13th feature film,
Saint Narcisse, the cult film director speaks with Michael Bullock about the importance of self-love and self-exposure
Michael Bullock Your work often explores queer subcultures and pornography as tools of political dissent. In your films, explicit queer sex is deployed as a means of empowerment and liberation. When did you begin to think about sex and sexuality that way?
Bruce LaBruce In 1985, I started
J.D.s, a queer-punk fanzine, with lesbian artist G.B. Jones. It was the era just after gay liberation, the engine of which was a very aggressive, militant sexuality. In Toronto, the leather bars were always packed, and there would be lines at the saunas even on weekdays. I was partly caught up in all that but also disillusioned with the mainstream gay movement because it was sexist, misogynistic, racist and classist. So I turned to punk. But punk was kind of homophobic and misogynistic as well, so my friends and I made our fanzines and Super-8 movies as queer and in-your-face as possible, to tell the punks that they weren’t as radical as they claimed to be if they couldn’t accept us. I collaged extreme images from the gay world that coincided with punk, like Mohawks and leather, alongside images of actual punks.