A silent film speaks the language of gay men online

It seems like some of my best posts have been about things I have found on Tumblr. Queer street art, crazy videos or films that never seem to die.

I find the site fascinating. It has everything from bears people are jealous of to ridiculous amounts of pornography to snippets of queer history.

But once in a while something pops up that I can’t ignore.


Still from Jaime Carrera’s Interface

Interface is a short film (mildly NSFW) by Jaime Carrera (along with with collaborator Tyler Jensen), a Minneapolis-based artist. The film follows one gay man’s life through his online hookups. Without a word of dialogue, Carrera’s film echoes the lives of many gay men who meet other men over the internet.

The film, which is hosted on Vimeo, comes with a small description, or caveat.

This film is not autobiographical. It does not judge nor condone. It is based on the real-life collective experiences of various close friends. When it comes to the internet, there are very unique and specific circumstances that have become the exclusive property of homosexual men . . . for better or worse. This film is a humorous nod to those situations. It leaves the options open to interpretation and the decisions to those who live it.

Carrera’s short films run the gamut from performance-art videos to touching stories about saying goodbye. He explained, via email, how this film came to be. “I used a lot of the conversations I’d had with gay male friends who’d experienced these things as fodder for the film,” he wrote. “I feel like this film inhabits a small world that is unique to us as gay men. I liked that it would be somewhat insular in a certain kind of way for some people. Like a secret language that most us (as gays) would understand.”

Journalist, writer, blogger, producer.

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