Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.

Arthur J. Bressan Jr. (May 27, 1943 – July 29, 1987) was an American director, writer, producer, documentarian and gay pornographer, best known for pioneering independent queer cinema in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. He wrote and directed the 1985 feature film Buddies, which was the first American film to grapple with the subject of the AIDS pandemic. Other directorial endeavors include the largely influential 1977 documentary Gay USA (the first documentary by and about LGBT people ), and the 1983 feature film Abuse. He died on July 29, 1987, at the age of 44 due to an AIDS-related illness. Bressan deeply admired filmmakers Frank Capra and Preston Sturges, the works of which he has noted as being hugely influential on his personal ambitions and filmmaking style. Despite his love of filmmaking, Bressan never received any formal education or training relating to it, instead acquiring his filmic skillset from personal experience. His postsecondary education was composed of time at both New York University and Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. Bressan began to live an openly gay life in the early 1970s, correlating to the start of his time in San Francisco, a city known for its vibrant queer communities.

Filmography

The vast majority of Bressan's body of filmic work was concerned with gay and queer being, the bulk of which belonged to the genre of gay pornography. However, much of the pornographic imagery was interwoven with complex narratives conflicts, blurring the line between fiction film and pornography; this was relatively unconventional during the 1970s and 1980s. Below is a chronological account of Bressan's original filmography.

Boys (short, 1969)

Two gay men of vastly different temperaments, one being a laid-back cruiser and the other an intellectual, meet and grow an intimate connection.

Coming Out (documentary short, 1972)

In this ten-minute short, Bressan interviews a variety of participants in San Francisco's first gay pride parade, the 1972 Gay Freedom Day celebration, shot in 16 millimeter colour film. The celebration consisted of approximately 2000 marchers and 15000 spectators.

Gay USA (documentary, 1977)

Bressan's Gay USA, restored in 2019, was a technical and thematic elaboration upon his 1972 short documentary Coming Out. Shot in one day across five cities by twenty-five different camera operators (all under Bressan's technical supervision), the documentary mostly consists of a variety of aerial shots and close-up interviews of the participants of the various Pride celebrations across the country.

The total budget for Gay USA was around the US$8000 mark, which included the crew, equipment and the post-production phase that lasted approximately two months. Word of the film spread across various queer communities in the country, notably San Francisco, where it premiered in 1977. Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the United States, helped spread awareness for the film by selling premiere tickets at his shop, Castro Camera. Star Geoff Edholm (Robert) died of AIDS in 1989, shortly after Bressan died of the same illness in 1987. Star David Schachter (David) is now a prominent AIDS and queer activist.

"Every once in a while you get the chance to make a statement on film that has nothing to do with your career, with ego, with money - but only with the issues of life and love and death. If Buddies turns out to be my last film, it'll be a fine way to go." - Arthur J. Bressan Jr. quoted in Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet

Copies of Abuse and Buddies are held by the Hormel Center at the San Francisco Public Library as part of a collection donated by the Frameline Film Festival.

Other career endeavours

Education

Prior to committing to filmmaking full-time, Bressan worked as a high school teacher at Power Memorial Academy, as well as for the US Department of Education. During this time, he would independently produce a variety of Super 8 films.

Late life and The Bressan Project

As the 1980s progressed, Bressan's friends remember him growing increasingly ill and physically weak.

Influence and larger themes in works

Bressan believed that sexual identity corresponded directly to an individual's overall identity. For this reason, the entirety of his body of work was, to varying degrees, concerned with validating queer (mostly gay, in terms of relations between two cisgender men) existence in of itself. When at parties in New York, Bressan would unapologetically introduce himself as a gay pornographer to the people he met, attempting to normalize gay culture to broader straight communities in a somewhat shocking and destabilizing manner.