The Gypsy’s Ball: An Ava-Graph Film

New York: Jewel Theatre, 1971. Card bifolium. Signed by Maria Montez at cover. Item #10476

Program for a series of screenings by the underground queer erotic filmmaker Avery Willard, The Gypsy’s Ball - signed by Warhol Superstar and Jack Smith icon Mario Montez. 

A career Broadway photographer, Willard was also a physique artist, gay activist, experimental filmmaker, leatherman, pornographer, and founder of one of the earliest gay newspapers in New York. Through his distribution company, Ava-graph, Willard produced a series of queer erotic films at the intersection of experimental and pornographic from 1958 into the 1970s. In 1968, under the name Bruce King, Willard began publishing a newspaper, Gay Scene, which he published until 1992. He also wrote and published leather erotica during this period.

Though there is little record of the film, it apparently followed the adventures of Lily Lonely, a “wicked gypsy and a mischievous boy.”

 

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