The Gay in Gauge: Pat Rocco and the Significance of 16mm to Gay Liberation

Abstract

The advent of 16mm technologies has been widely acknowledged as a crucial catalyst for the development of educational film and adult cinema, two seemingly distinct cultural pursuits.1 Yet with the rise of a gay independent cinema movement in the 1960s, educational and pornographic endeavors became fused cultural enterprises, and 16mm functioned as “gay useful media,” a set of cultural projects that forged gay institutions and solidified gay counterpublics.2 Activistentrepreneur Pat Rocco’s 16mm Bizarre Productions Newsfilms, newsreel films made in 1970 to 1976 that covered gay activism, are a compelling example of this complex form of filmmaking. Rocco’s newsreel unit was a division of his Bizarre Productions, a company that primarily specialized in homoerotic softcore shorts. The specific funding source for the Newsfilms is unclear, but they were likely personally financed by Rocco and therefore informally subsidized by his earnings from Bizarre Productions’ softcore mailorder and theatrical distribution. These newsreels were screened both nontheatrically at gay community events and theatrically in adult cinemas