PROTHERO.
It consists of interviews with 26 lesbians La Vi presenting experience. The interviews are wide skilfully cut together to make a documentary which remains engrossing, moving and entertaining throughout 128 minIgnoring the too familiar SLCICOLVDC despair and so on, Word Is Out shows homosexuals dealing confidently and competently with the problems and difficulties of their lives.
Even those people who have experienced the most appalling persecution talk their experiences with an amazing lack of bitterness, even with numour. only have come out of the gay movement, writes BARRY exception, the stories of these lives all have happy endings.
When Whitey tells of her four institution she was placed there by her family at the age of loureen — ine image or the strong, genial, woman or the screen mineates the horror of the story she Cheerful Rick Stokes, who the CraCKCO living the lie of his marriage, has survived the tortures prolonged electric shock therapy. (*We could castrate you, ONC MEMBERS of the Mariposa Film Group who made 'Word is Out'.
The was told, 'but let's try some treatments and see what we can do there.') He is now an openly gay San Francisco politician. For the most part. however. the women and men in this film do not have exceptional stories to tell. But what is remarkable about mem, in terms incildl COnDosIte image sexuality that they are *well adjusted' people. easy-going Nearly apparently successful most conventional middle class ECT IES. For Word Is pitched at audience and of importantly, audience.
Despite its positive image of nomosexuanty, ine him makes too many compromises with the Vales OrIe bourgeois family.
"stable"
CHCOUHIECIS homoBE COCHIL all 'normal', MOOSS DIC them in the Out is middle Class Dicasure pertlaps There is a end of this month. recurrent assumption that gav women and men are particularly validated if they live together in couple relationships It is disturbing, for example, to hear a man whose sexual dI C casual night-stands asked if he thinks his behaviour is "healthy". A question like that is so loaded that a convincing reply is almost The film makes too much of an chort to prove unar tays arc just the same asstraights. For all that, the stories of the individual women and men provide a rich The film was made by the Mariposa Film Group, based in California. Although the group has not been able to get it shown in American schools, it will be screened across the country on public television towards unc cent INIGO.
provides SISCIT women. lesbians contested.
conventionally As well as explaining what the law is and how to cope with it, it concise and well-written explanation of its underlying sexist assumptions.
It show how, within the law "sexual minorities' derives from the fundamental oppression of The book makes it clear that, although lesbians are prosecuted under the criminal law less often than gay men, they are just asor more oppressed in the areas
----- pull-quotes -----
"WORD IS OUT', currently showing in London at the Scala Cinema, is the most positive of the films which
'THELAW and Sexuality'* is a much needed practical guide on 'how to cope with the law if you are not 100 per