sign of love
by
Douglas Messerli
Mark
Pariselli (screenwriter and director) Kiss / 2012 [4 minutes]
Using
Warhol’s 1964 film as a referent, Mark Pariselli took the 50-minute film that stood
up against the Hays Code, reducing it from 50 minutes to 4, this time in
protest to the laws that prohibit
Pariselli’s cast of performers, moreover,
were international, including figures from Iran, Tanzania, etc. They consisted
of El-Farouk Khaki, Troy Jackson, Maira Mohyeddin, Samantha Gillings, Adam Moco
and Marvin Lisan, pairing two male couples and one female couple.
Kiss begins with short one-on-one sessions
of deep kissing, like Warhol in black-and-white, before he brings all three
couples together in a full color representation as the camera moves down from
their lips to their feet, shifting the various couples position in the
cinematic tryptic. In the final sequence, they all turn to directly face the
camera, as if to signify the public intentionality of their act.
In the final few moments, the frame ends in a
colored test pattern which, when turned on its side, becomes a representation
of the rainbow flag.
Whether or not this challenge to the
persecuted LGBTQ individuals of other countries is significant is up to question,
but the gesture in this case is what matters; and the 21st century reiteration
of Warhol’s mid-20th century sexual flourish is fascinating, particularly since
what might have once shocked its audience is now generally accepted in the US
and most of the world.
Los
Angeles, August 1, 2025
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).
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