Tune of the Unknown Sad Gay

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I think it's safe to say this is a little bit of A Gay Cinephile Event here in New York this week that's very clearly worth my mentioning -- Anthology Film Archives is screening the "long-lost masterpiece of hardcore gay erotic cinema" from 1980s France called Equation to an Unknown starting tomorrow and running through November 20th. The film was very clearly a big influence on the filmmaker Yann Gonzalez, whose recent gay slasher Knife+Heart I absolutely adore -- Anthology quotes Gonzalez in the press materials even:

"The most melancholic porn film I’ve ever seen. It’s very sad, and aesthetically beautiful. Just a young man wandering through several depictions of love and choreographies of love-making; it’s like a ceremony, a ceremony of fantasies, especially the last sequence where the main character recalls all his previous fantasies, which come one by one around his bed and make love to him. I think it’s one of the most beautiful film sequences of French cinema.” 

The great folks at Altered Innocence just restored Equation, so this'll be a pristine new print -- as you can see in their NSFW trailer below the film looks stunning (in that very specific period porn sleaze milieu, that is);
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Alongside the film for the first three nights (that is to say tomorrow through Saturday) Anthology will also be screening the 17-minute short film Le Journal d'un combat from director Guy Gilles, which apparently documents the process of Francis Savel, Equation's director, painting a painting in 1964 (and it's apparently narrated by Alain Delon!) All these arty gays of their moments mixing it up -- nothing's changed!