Fierté gay
Sylvain Desmilles
2010 - 52 min - HDCam - Couleur - France

Changes in heterosexuals’ perceptions of gays reflected in 40 years of television footage.
In the space of forty years, the view of homosexuals presented on Western TV channels has been completely revolutionised. A taboo subject only a short time ago – persecuted, condemned, the victims of scorn and extreme caricatures – gay people are today presented in a positive way in all the major media. This visibility reflects the profound changes brought about by civil rights movements, the sexual revolution, and AIDS. By making visible homosexuals’ struggles for freedom and equality, television has supported and even accelerated changes in heterosexuals’ attitudes towards gay people. One emblematic phenomenon from this viewpoint has been the worldwide success of Gay Pride events, Christopher Street Day parades and other Pride marches.
Over the years, they have changed with the image of homosexuals and have become a symbol of gay pride, a media showcase, and a yardstick of tolerance and of the democratic advances to be made. But the recent attacks on certain Gay Pride events show that homophobia and prejudice against gays are making a comeback. Forty years after the very first march in New York in June 1970, are the representation of gays and their integration in society again being challenged?
To take stock of the extent of the progress made, and put the dangers threatening it into perspective, it was important to retrace and understand how the change in the perception of gays came about. To do so, we have chosen to focus on the medium of television, a symbol of the heterosexual viewpoint and of major changes in social attitudes.
Sylvain Desmille, the director, belongs to a generation which became aware of its homosexuality through the representation of it which television provided. By asserting and then by transcending the caricatures and clichés often assumed by gays themselves, by asking questions about the causes of homosexuality and then about the lives of gay people themselves, and by accompanying them in the worst moments of AIDS, both in a pedagogical and voyeuristic way, television has helped to change the image heterosexual people had of homosexuals. This televisual perception is largely founded on the testimony and actions of gay people themselves, who very quickly understood the importance of media issues when it came to having their rights recognised and combating homophobia.
Written in the “generational” first person, this lively and sensitive film is dotted with humorous touches and moving moments; it asks questions about different situations in an international context. Because it was and remains a reference for all TV channels and all the world’s homosexual movements, the American model takes centre stage, through our choices of archive footage (often little known or previously unscreened), our shoots in New York, Washington and San Francisco, and our interviewees (including Edmund White, John Giono, Perry Brass and Gerard Koskovitch). The gays interviewed present a counterpoint to heterosexual perceptions, and enable a better understanding of the dialogue which has come into being through television.