UK Premiere: Laws of Love (Gesetze der Liebe)
Still from Laws of Love, part of Cinema Rediscovered

UK Premiere: Laws of Love (Gesetze der Liebe) + Panel Discussion

classified 18 (CTBA) S

Restored & Rediscovered

Film

Please note: This was screened in July 2022

Director
Magnus Hirschfeld
Cast
Conrad Veidt, Reinhold Schünzel, Fritz Schulz, Magnus Hirschfeld
Details
101 mins, Subtitled, 1927, Germany
Primary language
German

Painstakingly restored by the Munich Film Museum, Laws Of Love (Gesetze der Liebe) is structured as a series of lectures from pioneering scientist and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld.

Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (SHC), which deployed scientific theories of human sexuality to advocate for the recognition of LGBTQ+ people, and campaigned against their legal persecution.

Gesetze der Liebe grew out of Hirschfeld’s first foray into film – the path-breaking gay rights fiction feature Different from the Others (Anders als die Andern, 1919), which Hirschfeld co-wrote and which he appears as himself, delivering some of the lecture material later transferred into Laws of Love.

Through the lectures, Hirschfeld explores the prevalence of non-heteronormative behaviour in the natural world, to expose the injustice of Paragraph 175 – Germany’s anti-sodomy penal code at the time. The film is considered to be an influential example of the ‘enlightenment film’ trend that was popular throughout Weimar-era Germany.

Presented in partnership with Queer Vision.

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