In the Flesh: Film Historian Elizabeth Purchell Leads the Reappraisal of Porn

Photo by Jana Birchum

Like all the best parts of queer history, not everyone knows about Elizabeth Purchell. Those who do know the film historian often pick that knowledge up through her work with Austin Film Society as the Queer Cinema: Lost & Found series programmer. Others may know her through her 2019 documentary film, Ask Any Buddy, made up of stitched-together archival clips of gay male pornography, or its accompanying Insta­gram feed and podcast. She has been a staunch advocate of the less-loved elements of queer film's lineage – the porn, the weird, the wild – since a 2016 screening of a 1972 gay erotic film, Bijou, in Tampa, Florida, with director Wakefield Poole in attendance. Purchell recalled, "Seeing that specific film just made me go, 'Well, if this exists, what else is there?' ... I'd always write this stuff off as, 'It's just old porn. Who cares about that, there's porn everywhere.' But finally starting to see these films as art and cinema really flipped a switch in my brain."

In programming Queer Cinema: Lost & Found, Purchell wanted to provide an opening to budding LGBTQ cinephiles. She described her programming as a cross between two other AFS series, Essential Cinema and Lates: hitting familiar canonical film beats as well as deeper cuts. "Every single screening, it's been a completely different crowd every time," Purchell said. "When we showed Cruising, the screening sold out, [and] people were there in full [leather] gear. It was wonderful. And then when we showed Kamikaze Hearts, which is this lesbian movie about the porn industry, it was nothing but young dykes. As I was walking out of the theatre, I heard someone say, 'This is the hottest crowd I've ever seen at this theatre.'" Next on the schedule is what Purchell described as the perfect end-of-summer flick: Wigstock: The Movie. Not only will director Barry Shils be in attendance for a post-film Q&A, but folks will be treated to a big, fun, drag festival documentary just a week after Pride. "I love more serious dramatic things but I also just like dumb fun," she said, "and I think Wigstock is about as dumb fun as you can get."

As a self-identified curious filmgoer, Purchell's urge to know more about the media she likes has been in her from a young age. While growing up in Florida during the less-accepting early Nineties and early Aughts, she consumed all of the Criterion Collection from her local library as well as all the sci-fi and horror genre films available. Movies were a gateway to LGBTQ life, and that lens influenced her later in life. "My knowledge of queer people or trans people didn't really extend further than what I saw on TV, in movies, or on tabloid," she said, citing Rolling Stone's outing of Lana Wachowski as a deep-rooted memory that came up during her gender transition last year.

Her interest in queer adult cinema began at that Bijou screening, but over the years she's amassed a wide knowledge of gay male pornography from the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. Other people's lack of respect for what those films represented in the queer cinematic lineage bothers Purchell. Flattening the historical scope to only see films from the mid- to late Eighties, or in the New Queer Cinema oeuvre like Todd Haynes' or Gregg Araki's work, does a disservice to the myriad erotic films that formed those later queer works' foundation. Purchell pointed to films like Fred Halsted's L.A. Plays Itself, Radley Metz­ger's Score, or director Arthur J. Bressan Jr.'s pornographic filmography as underappreciated cornerstones in the depiction of gay life on screen. "These gay adult films did the groundwork," Purchell said. "In these films, you see some of the very first gay coming out stories on film, you see the first gay romances. There are gay horror films, there's gay war films – gay Westerns, gay comedies, movies about gay marriage and gay divorce."

Interacting with these works of pornographic art for as long as she has, Purchell admitted her relationship to the materials did shift once she began transitioning. "This entire time, I've been looking at these films simply as cinema, you know. I don't really get turned on by them," she said. After coming out as a trans woman and realizing her attraction to other women, the distance between herself and the gay male sex on screen became understandable. Replacing any sense of titillation was an appreciation for the incredible craft behind many of these older gay pornographic films, which Purchell reasoned is why she's been a successful historian of the genre. "There were [directors] who really did see making these films as being a political act," she said, adding that most directors like Arthur J. Bressan Jr. found sex to be a source of gay liberation. "[Liberation] wasn't just the right to get married or join the Army; it was to have sex and not get arrested or face legal prosecution for it."

Purchell originally came to Austin for its film scene but current conservative attacks have made Texas a hard place to stay in. "It's been very scary and very hard for me to continue to want to live here," she admitted. "I've been followed around H-E-B. I've been called a faggot for the first time on the street. Been gawked at a lot." Despite a growing sense of fear that's driving her away from Texas, Purchell said she still treasures her current work with AFS. "I'm so proud and honored ... to create this little space where people can come and see themselves on screen," she said, "to see queer movies as an escape or as a galvanizing force to do something, to take action."

Queer Cinema: Lost & Found presents Wigstock: The Movie, Fri., Aug. 26, and Wed., Aug 31, 7pm at AFS Cinema, 6406 N. I-35 #3100. austinfilm.org.