Equation to an Unknown
Door AMFM x PFFA @
Filmhuis Cavia,
Amsterdam
This restored 16mm print, commissioned by filmmaker Yann Gonzalez in 2016 from the original negative, screens now for the first time in Amsterdam, on loan from the Cinémathèque française and Gonzalez himself, who will introduce the film in person. Co-programmed with the Porn Film Festival Amsterdam.
Équation à un Inconnu is at once a defining moment and an obscure episode of gay erotic cinema. Its director, Francis Savel – an artist who worked largely within the margins of 1970s and 80s French New Wave and adult film production – sets his images to a pulsing synth score. In the film, we follow a young motorcyclist through a series of erotic encounters that circle around desire, memory, and the search for another, the “unknown” of the title. The year that followed would bring the first recorded cases of AIDS, giving Savel’s elegy of bodies an unintended prophetic weight.