Desire (1990)

• 77%
• 1990
• Documentary
• Stuart Marshall

Stuart Marshall's forceful new film (separately commissioned, but screened in Britain as part of - and the most-watched episode of - Channel Four's lesbian and gay magazine series) isn't just about the holocaust. Sub-headed "Sexuality in Germany 1910-1945", it digs up a whole deal of stories leading to the Nazi extermination of lesbians and gay men. The body and nature worship cult; the deification of same-sex friendships; the growth of gay bars; the persecution of sexual radicals - Marshall's interviews add up to a sharp analysis of the anxieties and inconsistencies in the rise of Nazism. Of course the massacre is a hideous and appalling historical fact. But Desire aims to get more out of the death toll than anger or upset.