A friend who made his name in the world of queer underground theater often quipped that “Film is forever.” When he landed a featured role in a late Paul Morrissey film, he was confident that something he had done would outlast him. That film turned 40 years old last year and has long been out of print. It is trading in the gray market of collector DVDs, so it isn’t officially lost. But the number of lost films is staggering. It is estimated that 90% of silent films, and 50% of sound films made before 1950 are lost. The first forays into film preservation go back to 1935, when the Museum of Modern Art started collecting and preserving important films. Not long after that, MGM tossed much of their back catalog onto a fire in Gone with the Wind because the film stock made for a good cinematic fire. UNESCO designated film as a part of the world’s cultural heritage in 1980. Despite this change in attitude, there are films made since then that are officially lost.

This is especially true with queer cinema. During the early days of the AIDS epidemic, whole collections were destroyed by mortified relatives. Friends and lovers (gay marriage is a very recent development) were often excluded when it came time to settle estates. Families often ignored wills and promised donations to institutions. With the mainstreaming of gayness, historians who might have been depended on to preserve queer culture adhered to an agenda that left out the demimonde. As nature abhors a vacuum, it was just a matter of time until queerness got its due. One of the highest-profile historians to tackle this world is Elizabeth Purchell. She is tracking down pornographic films from the mid-20th century and finding in them a rich portrait of gay life in an otherwise lost era.

She provides the commentary on a newly restored print of What Really Happened to Baby Jane. This film was the product of a group that went by the name The Gay Girls Riding Club. Formed in the late 1950s by a group of gay Hollywood-based professionals, their annual Halloween Ball was the stuff of legend. (There is a jaw-dropping video of their 1986 Halloween ball on YouTube.) Between 1962 and 1972 they made a series of underground film parodies (often compared to the Kuchar Brothers) based on Hollywood movies that were popular in the gay community. Their take on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane was filmed a year after the original, using actual props from the Hollywood version. Because of their Hollywood ties, the cinematography and production values exceeded the usual underground fare. It is also likely that they had bigger budgets than their underground peers. Although some of their films are still considered lost, the five that remain have been given deluxe restorations. These were recently released on the Vinegar Syndrome label, which is also releasing a set of rare Fred Halsted films. (Halsted was the first porn director to be included in the MoMA collection.) Perhaps the era of found films has officially commenced. Giddy-up!