Take a non-chronological journey through the history and also through the present of queer cinema. In his new book,.Ryan Gilbey deep dives into the work of directors such as Andrew Haigh, Bruce LaBruce, Isabel Sandoval and Cheryl Dunye, at times following the action firsthand on set. He seeks to unearth their most challenging and personal truths, just as these provocateurs seek to defy established orthodoxies and outrage the world. It Used To Be Witches “asks whether cinema can be an effective weapon of resistance and change, and celebrates an outlaw spirit which refuses to die”

You can purchase your copy of Ryan Gilbey’s It Used To Be Witches by clicking here. Below is a book extract carefully selected exclusively for our readers.

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It is a spring morning in south London, and Kurtis Lincoln is holding his dick in his hand. He is wearing black leather trousers, black stack heeled boots and a sleeveless white t-shirt with “OH WOW” printed on it. He is pissing on the canvas. The canvas is lying on the stone floor of the white-walled gallery. The torrent of piss hits it at full pelt, making a noise like an endless drum roll. The canvas is covered with oxidised copper, which reacts with the piss to produce a Rorschach tangle of squiggles and blotches. The piss spatters the rug underneath, sending an acrid tang into the air.

Bruce LaBruce stands a few feet away, peering at the monitor. His eyes are hidden behind tinted Gucci shades, which he never removes. In the 1980s and 1990s, he looked like Puck: there he is hitch-hiking naked in Super 8½ [1994], his pert little behind, his leather boots. He used to claim that Madonna stole the nude hitch-hiking idea from him for her coffee-table book Sex. These days, he freely admits that he thieved it from her. Today, he is still short and compact, but, at 59, a twink no more; he has varnished skin and a chewy Burgess

Meredith look about him. He carries himself like an ex-boxer, tough and springy, conserving his energy for when he might need it. His bare arms are blue with tattoos. He wears so many chunky gold rings that they could be mistaken for knuckledusters.

Hours seem to have elapsed but somehow Kurtis is still pissing. Life carries on outside. The beep of a truck reversing in the street is audible through the walls. A phone rings in an upstairs room.

“Ignore it”, says LaBruce, still watching intently.

The stream finally slows to a dribble, then dries up entirely. Kurtis shakes his dick and stuffs it back inside his trousers.

“Cut. Great shot. Very Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers.”

He congratulates Kurtis on the strength of his flow.

“I used to have a bladder like that”, the director says.

“Ket, baby”, offers Kurtis in commiseration.

LaBruce inspects the rug. “Could someone do a search on how to get piss stains out? I think it’s, like, baking soda”.

A few crew members look up and laugh as they arrange the next shot.

“I’m serious though”, he says. “Because that could really stain.”

I bound over to Kurtis to introduce myself. It was easy to fall in love with him a little as I watched him peeing. Now I see him up close: plump lips, black moustache, impish expression. His hair, normally a wild cascade of Louis XIV curls, hangs in two pigtails.

“In my mind, it’s like Wednesday Addams if she was an 1980s’ muscle boy”, he says.

We shake hands.

“Now you’ve got my piss on you.”

Victor Fraga, one of the producers, materialises alongside LaBruce to ask him to come and approve the sling.

“The sling?” says the director. “We’re not doing that scene today.”

“But the woman who has the sling is going on holiday in three hours”.

“That’s three hours”, LaBruce shrugs, then walks off.

Victor turns to Kurtis and hands him a black rubber bulb.

“Can you use this now?”

“Sure”, Kurtis replies brightly, and heads for the bathroom.

On the way, he passes Bishop Black, star of Harvey Rabbit’s Captain Faggotron Saves the Universe [20230]. Bishop, who is going to fuck Kurtis in today’s big scene, has a shaved head that shines like a polished doorknob, tunnel earrings in their drooping lobes and drowsy, come-back-to-bed eyes; they are wearing a white towelling robe over silver trousers and a sequinned pink corset. The couple hug (“Hey babes!”), then Kurtis bops away, douche in hand, jiggling his shoulders and singing I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.

Bishop sinks into a chair in front of the mirror so that Laura Sessions, the make-up artist, can try out white contact lenses for the sex scene later. To give herself more elbow room as she works, Laura nudges aside a pair of lifelike silicon feet which are sitting on the table in front of her. Moulded into the sole of each foot is a vulva.

This is the set of The Visitor [2024], the first film LaBruce has made in London since Skin Flick, his 1999 foray into skinhead porn. Originally titled Gang of Four Skins, Skin Flick features shots of skinheads fucking on a Union Jack, naked except for their DM bovver boots, and ejaculating on a copy of Mein Kampf. “They were shooting in Brixton”, recalls Peter Strickland, who got his first industry job as a runner on the movie. ‘Terry Richardson was there. It was the scene where the main guy’s jerking off, and Richardson was taking non-stop photographs, all very close up. You could see the actor getting limper and limper. Finally, this crew member shouted at Richardson: “You’ve ruined his erection!” There was a big argument, and Bruce ordered everyone out. It was a very long, tense day.’

The Visitor is based on Pasolini’s 1968 masterpiece Theorem. In the original film, Terence Stamp plays a nameless stranger (the role now taken by Bishop) who materialises almost magically in the home of a bourgeois Milanese family.

“Who is that boy?”, someone asks at the party where he makes his entrance.

“A boy”, comes the reply.

With barely a word, he seduces each member of the family in turn – mother, father, teenage son and daughter, as well as the maid for good measure. Then he leaves. His imminent departure is announced one evening by telegram, just as his arrival had been a

short while earlier. There are no explanations; he goes as casually as he arrived. He is on-screen for a vanishingly brief amount of time, but he permeates the movie. Once seen, Stamp’s arctic blue peepers float in the memory forever.

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The images on this article are stills from The Visitor, both featuring Kurtis Lincoln (with Bishop Black at the top, and on his own in the middle).