Screening of "The Leather Boys" (1964)

dublin | arts and media | event notice Friday November 09, 2012 23:16 by Dublin Film Qlub - Dublin Film Qlub filmqlub at gmail dot com

A queer celebration of working-class biker culture

NOTE: The screening of the film originally scheduled for November at the Dublin Film Qlub, "Les Amities Particulieres", has been postponed due to some unforseen last minute problems with the film distributors. Apologies for any inconvenience this might cause. In its place we are screening another great film! Hope to see you there.

THE LEATHER BOYS

Dir. Sidney J. Furie, 1964
Starring: Rita Tushingham, Colin Campbell, Dudley Sutton

Saturday 17 November 2012
3.30pm
doors open at 3.00pm
New Theatre
(entrance through Connolly Books)
43 East Essex street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2
day membership: €8.00
free tea & coffee

Bikers, who doesn’t find them sexy? They are free, unconventional, they make their own roads. And there’s the leather gear, or at any rate the body-hugging pants and blazers that keep the chill at bay. Most importantly perhaps, their know-how of all those mysterious mechanical bits seems to promise competence in every other department…

The early 1960s marked the reign of the Harley-Davidson and —on this side of the pond— the Triumph Bonneville. We’ve all seen the classic American biker buddy movie Easy Rider, an epic which defined a generation and a favourite film with the boys. Then there is the cheeky and often disturbing film Scorpio Rising, an obscure and experimental gay ode to bikers, directed by Californian queer underground hero Kenneth Anger. And now, we would like to introduce you to the third film in the gang, a quiet, modest, semi-mainstream British movie of the same period, which tends to be overlooked in gay film histories: "The Leather Boys".

In the film, young biker Reggie is disappointed with married life, but fellow biker Pete is happy to provide the support and love that Reggie needs… In some ways, "The Leather Boys" is a film about marriage, and how it can artificially change people’s behaviour. In other ways, the film is concerned with gender, and the absurd expectations on women and men of a certain generation, who thought themselves free but were only repeating old patterns. "The Leather Boys" is also about friendship, and the support and loyalty which only comrades (whether they are our buddies or our spouses) can offer us. Of course, what we love most about the film is that this biker gang is a transparent metaphor for the gay community and for gay culture, thriving on the margins, beautiful, and proud. Also, we love the film’s suggestion that there is a ‘queer biker gene’ dormant in everyone, which may just awaken if you throw that damned GPS away.