Nitrate Kisses combines interviews with homosexual couples, four same-sex couples making love, footage of 1933 homoerotic film Lot in Sodom and images of LGBT history. The couples making love are two elderly lesbians, an interracial gay male couple, two young pierced and tattooed women of color and an S/M lesbian couple.The scenes of the gay male couple are overlaid with the Motion Picture Production Code.Part of the film focuses on the story of Willa Cather, a lesbian novelist who tried to destroy all evidence of her sexual orientation before she died. Another section explores the treatment of lesbians by the Third Reich.
Nitrate Kisses is a 1992 experimental documentary film directed by Barbara Hammer. According to Hammer, it is an exploration of the repression and marginalization of LGBT people since the First World War.
*Barbara Hammer is known for creating groundbreaking experimental films dealing with women’s issues such as gender roles, lesbian relationships and coping with aging and family. Hammer is responsible for some of the first lesbian-made films in history, including Dyketactics (1974) and Women I Love (1976). n 2010, Hammer published her autobiography, HAMMER! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life, which addresses her personal history and her philosophies on art.
