One film that stood out to us out of the Sunny Bunny competition at Molodist 50th was RAW! UNCUT! VIDEO! a documentary, love story and look at fetish porn. It might seem like a small independent documentary but screening it because more of an experience and the story unfolds to be quite epic as it chronicles the rise and fall of homegrown gay porn studio Palm Drive Video, and explores how a devoted couple helped battle a devastating health crisis by promoting kinky sex. We caught up with documentary filmmakers Ryan A. White and Alex Clausen after the festival because we had so many questions and one documentary didn’t feel like enough!

“Raw! Uncut! Video!” made its big-screen debut at Sunny Bunny during the Molodist 50th Film Festival in Ukraine. You had screenings before, but festivals were moved online this past year. I’m assuming that most of the footage from Palm Drive Studio was viewed at home on VHS back in the day, so it was a real experience to see it on the big screen. Overall, how was your screening experience and time in Kyiv?

RYAN: Kyiv was AMAZING! Molodist was such an awesome festival and a really wonderful experience for us. As you noted, all of our screenings up to this point have been online, which on one level is great because folks have greater access to watch the film, but the energy is completely different from screening in an actual cinema with an audience. I mean… the film had its World Premiere in Miami, and I was at home in my sweatpants all day doing boring chores around the house! It’s kind of hard to get super enthusiastic about those virtual screenings because there’s not that sense of people coming together for the cinematic experience. Plus, we’ve been doing pre-recorded Q&As, which means we’re not actually hearing feedback from viewers… So, then we get to Kyiv for our International Premiere, and “Raw! Uncut! Video!” had two screenings in these big proper theaters, with good projection and sound systems. VHS fetish porn on the big screen! We could finally see that viewers were engaged and interested in the film. Beforehand, we had no idea how audiences in Ukraine were going to react! It was like: ‘OMG, are we going to be deported for showing dick cheese, mudfucking, and puke porn??”

Obviously the film has a lot more to it than just the shocking content, but clearly a lot of the content is quite confronting for some people, and never having watched it with an audience anywhere in the world we didn’t know what to expect. But, we only had a handful of walkouts! And, overall it seemed like folks really enjoyed the documentary and got a lot out of it. We had a fantastic Q&A, with tons of thoughtful and intelligent questions and positive feedback.

ALEX: As Ryan stated, the screening in Kyiv was incredible.  For a project that took us five years, with the last year being during the pandemic, to finally have an in-person screening was pretty surreal and exciting. One of my fears was that it might be hard for audiences outside of the geographic area and leather/fetish communities to connect with the film.  But from the Q&A, folks totally got it. It was totally affirming and wonderful.

On the note of “dick cheese”, the film does spill some secrets! One of the writers in the documentary said that some of the films wouldn’t be out of place at the Whitney. I couldn’t agree more. What attracted you initially to Palm Drive Studio, was it the aesthetics or the story of Jack Fritscher met Mark Hemry?

RYAN: I would definitely say we were attracted to the aesthetics from the beginning. Both of us were really inspired by that grimy analog VHS look! There were hundreds of hours of archival footage and it was really fun to work with. But, more importantly, the story of Palm Drive Video highlights the rarely discussed history of how leather and kink communities have consistently stepped forward to help battle the AIDS epidemic in North America and Europe. In the 80s and 90s, AIDS brought on so much sex-negativity and fear of sexual contact. Lots of queer folks either went back into the closet or swore off sex forever. But, sexuality is super important for lots of people. For many of us, who we are sexually is a foundational element of our individual identities. So, to say “No sex ever again!” can be really damaging and depressing, even if there is indeed a danger involved. And, while navigating the worst years of the epidemic, it was critical to keep people positive about themselves and their sexualities.

There’s a lot of ways that folks can be sexual and explore their own erotic personas without exchanging bodily fluids. Kinky play may not be for everyone, but there are infinite ways to explore that don’t put you or your partner(s) at risk. Plus, watching porn at home is generally safe! So, boutique porn companies like Palm Drive Video, along with other activists in leather and kink communities, promoted alternative sexual practices and sexual experimentation as ways that queer folks could continue expanding their erotic lives while also protecting themselves from HIV/AIDS. That particular form of AIDS activism hasn’t really been discussed much, so we felt “Raw! Uncut! Video!” would be a great way to explore the topic.

ALEX: My initial reaction was “what is this wild stuff?!” From the degraded VHS images to the guy making out with a dirt wall, how could someone not be drawn in?  And for us, this was all from a giant queer archive in our local area. The Palm Drive studio was located north of San Francisco near the Russian River, an area with a long queer history. To find an unexpected window into the queer past in an area where you live was such an incredible surprise. The archive, which includes Palm Drive and many other documents and imagery, is such an invaluable teaching tool as Ryan points out.  For me, the additional discovery of the lasting and loving relationship between Jack and Mark, was a wonderful surprise.

For people who haven’t seen the film. Who are Jack Fritscher met Mark Hemry and what made their story so important for you to tell?

RYAN: Jack Fritscher and Mark Hemry are this amazingly sweet gay couple who have been together for 40+ years… and, they also happen to be kinky pornographers! Actually, they’re so MUCH more than that! Jack is a very prolific writer, photographer, and historian. He’s published numerous books on everything from leather fiction to LGBTQ+ history to witchcraft (he has great stories about interviewing Anton LaVey at a midnight Black Mass in the 1960s).

In the late 1970s, he was also one of the pioneering editors of the seminal leather magazine DRUMMER and was Robert Mapplethorpe’s West Coast lover. Ultimately, he’s an elder in the queer community and has spent his life tirelessly recording under-represented facets of LGBTQ+ cultures. Palm Drive Video is just one of his many projects.

Mark is his loving husband, who was the other half of Palm Drive. What made their story so important is that they have this incredible, loving bond between them that I think contrasts with what people outside this community might expect of leathermen. It’s so easy for kinky, sex-positive people to be written off as nothing more than perverts. But, here you have this long-lasting gay relationship based on more than 40 years of mutual love and respect for each other, that has clearly been strengthened by their shared love of exploring fetish sexuality. It’s really remarkable to see how sexual openness and being kinky can be the building blocks for a solid romantic relationship.

Sex-positive porn was born during the AIDS epidemic, could you please describe the correlation for those of us who don’t know this part of history?

RYAN: I’m not sure that sex-positive porn was necessarily born during the AIDS era, but I think that the epidemic really forced more folks to think outside the box. People realized that they couldn’t keep approaching sex in the same that they always had before because suddenly sex was dangerous. A lot of people had to get used to wearing condoms or using other forms of protection. But, there are so many possibilities in the realm of kink and fetish that (for some people) have potential to be even more exciting than ‘regular’ sex.

Our sexual fantasies are so idiosyncratic and personal. So, as horrifying as AIDS was for queer communities on so many levels, it was also an opportunity for people to really dig deep into their sexual psyches and explore their inner fantasy worlds more than they might have before. At the same time, the broader culture was so judgmental, antagonistic, and homophobic, I believe that for some folks there was an element of saying “Fuck it! I’m just gonna enjoy being a kinky pervert, but be safe about it”. And, laying claim to those fetish identities was quite liberating for a lot of people. Thus, we see this proliferation of kink and fetish identities during this time period that has only continued to grow and diversify through the years.

Watching a documentary about the 80s and 90s today, it’s hard for me not to see it through modern lenses. I saw #notfilter before there were hashtags, body positivity, street casting, and most of all parrels with Covid-19 in the sense that many of us had to practice no sex due to social distancing. Being from the generation that would have just missed out on VHS as we moved online, what stood out to you about the story today?

RYAN: While we can’t really equate the two pandemics, there are certainly parallels between COVID- 19 and AIDS. Especially in regards to the social fears that caused people to feel very isolated and scared and unsure of how to proceed with their lives. Palm Drive’s project of sexual exploration as a way to deal with the horrors of HIV, was really inspiring because it shows that we need to keep our minds open to new possibilities and new ideas when our worlds are turned upside down by these deadly viruses… On another note, going through the Palm Drive archive it was always incredible to see the roots of certain fetishes or community-based identities that have continued to flourish and expand over time. For instance, Palm Drive made some of the earliest gay Bear and Chubby videos and often collaborated with the folks at Bear Magazine in the 1980s. For instance “Daddy’s Beer Belly in Bondage”, “Bellybucker”, and “WaterBear” are some of their videos that celebrate the eroticism of larger men – and are ultimately early examples of body positivity, which is obviously something very much in the public consciousness today.

ALEX: The COVID-19 pandemic arrived in our fifth and final year of production. For me, the parallel of figuring out how you adapt to a situation that shifts how you interact personally and physically with other people certainly pops out. As is pointed out in the film, creative folks find a way. There are ways to distract, and even find positive ways to move forward. To a place of hope, rather than of despair.

There are many interviews included, I think my favorite was “Thasher”’s mom talking about her heterosexual son being a Palm Drive superstar. This stood out to me, because universally we are afraid of our parents’ judgment and all need their support. Which interview stood out to you?

RYAN: Oh, definitely Thrasher and his mom! I mean, that woman is amazing – she’s just so open-minded and positive. In fact, she’s the one who convinced Thrasher to be in our film! At first he wasn’t interested in talking to us, because he’s “straight” and has a wife and kids. But, then his mom pressured him and he finally agreed. It really is one of the most unexpected and memorable interviews I’ve ever filmed.

ALEX:  Susan, Thrasher’s mom, is totally a highlight. But something really struck me in Steve Parker’s interview, which was his sheer joy in recollecting the time he spent recording “Lightning Rodz” with Palm Drive. Nearly thirty years later and he’s still beaming about the experience.  I think that was the point where I really started to understand what Jack and Mark were trying to accomplish. These films were not just about making money or getting off. They were about the enjoyment of mental and physical sexual exploration for the model, and eventually the viewer.

We did learn that Jack and Mark are trying to digitalize the archives, and that’s a large task. Do you know what their plans are? Any requests from the Whitney yet?

RYAN: Yeah, they’ve been working on digitizing their archive for years! This was wonderful for us, because Mark had already digitized the hundreds of hours of Palm Drive material prior to us starting on the documentary. They do have plans to work with a few different institutions in the U.S. on preserving their materials, but at the moment nothing is completely finalized so we’re not really at liberty to say much more.

ALEX: And lucky for us that they have done so much work in preserving their own archive!  Otherwise, this project could have taken much longer. It certainly makes me wonder about all the other queer archives around the world that could be languishing or lost. Fortunately, Jack and Mark have been able to be so proactive in the preservation of their work. It’s definitely been an invaluable lesson. We have to actively preserve and save our history, because no one is going to do it for us.

And finally, where will you be taking “Raw! Uncut! Video!” next? Any plans to show it in Europe soon?

RYAN: For this Summer, most of our upcoming screenings are in the States. But, we expect to have more European screenings starting in the Fall. Those festivals haven’t announced their programming yet, so we can’t say much more. In the meantime, keep an eye on our social media for updates! IG: @wohlerfilms Twitter & Facebook: @rawuncutvideo