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Poster for Different from the Others

Different from the Others

Opens on February 4

Director: Richard Oswald Run Time: 51 min. Format: Digital Projection Release Year: 1919 Language: German with English subtitles

Starring: Conrad Veidt, Ilse von Tasso-Lind, Leo Connard

One of the first gay-themed films in the history of cinema, DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS was banned at the time of its release, later burned by the Nazis, and was believed lost for more than forty years. Using recently discovered film segments, still photos and censorship documents from different archives, Filmmuseum Muenchen has resurrected this truly groundbreaking silent film for new audiences.

Enacted in 1871, the German penal code’s Paragraph 175 sentenced thousands of accused German homosexual men to jail terms for ‘unnatural vice between men.’ In 1919, director Richard Oswald and psychologist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld created a film intended to expose the unjust Paragraph 175 and help liberate the ‘third sex’from legal persecution and public scorn. DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS casts Conrad Veidt (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) as Paul Korner, a gay concert pianist blackmailed by a closeted low-life named Bollek. When Korner’s budding romance with a handsome young music student runs afoul of Bollek’s extortion, Korner goes to the German courts for protection. But the draconian Paragraph 175 makes criminals out of both accuser and accused, and the love Korner has found may cost him his career, his freedom, or his life. – KinoLorber films

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