Homosexual Century (The)

The(ir) Blurb...

Race d'Ep -- Paris street slang for homosexual, is a four-part French film that argues that ''gay liberation was not born in the 60's'' but, instead, had its roots in the mid-19th century. The film, which opens today at the Agee Room in the Bleecker Street Cinema, is modestly scaled but not amateurish, acted by what appear to be nonprofessionals who never overreach themselves. It seems to have been shot silent, with soundtrack narration added later.

It is the point of Lionel Soukaz and Guy Hocquenghem, who conceived and made the film, that the more or less concurrent development of photography and the birth of an unashamed homosexual consciousness in the 19th century were not a coincidence. Photography, says the narrator, ''created a new definition of 'mankind' '' and gave the homosexual the means by which he could express his ''forbidden'' desires.