• 1 Reworked copies of Botha’s paper were published at least nine times in various journals and books b (...)
• 2 See Russo, Vito, 1987, The Celluloid Closet.
• 3 In his first survey, Botha claimed that “less than five features with openly gay and lesbian charac (...)

2Martin Botha was the first scholar to engage actively and continuously with South African queer cinema and its history. He published the first survey, “Homosexuality in South African Cinema,” in 2003.1 Throughout his oeuvre, Botha has relied heavily on Vito Russo’s stereotypes of homosexuals, which he summarises as “the ‘sissy’, effeminate male and the ‘butch’ or manly woman” (Botha 2024, xi).2 In addition to claiming that “homosexuality is almost non-existent in South African cinema up till 1985,” Botha insists that portrayals of gays and lesbians as “victims of violence or ridicule, or as villains […] prevailed in most South African features up to 2023” (2024, xi). Botha’s most recent survey maintains that “less than 10 features with openly gay and lesbian characters [have been produced] in the past 127 years of South African cinema” and that no more than twenty queer short films and a few documentaries exist (Ibid., x).3

• 4 The Man Who Drove with Mandela (1998) is a semi-biographical portrait of the queer British theatre (...)
• 5 Apostles of Civilised Vice (1999) brings South African queer history to life through dramatisation (...)

3South Africa’s new Constitution and Bill of Rights in 1996—which granted groundbreaking constitutional rights for queer people—contributed to the country establishing itself at the centre of queer cultural production in Africa. The result was the production of several vital post-apartheid queer documentaries based on the research of prominent queer scholars, such as Greta Schiller’s The Man Who Drove with Mandela (1998), researched and written by Mark Gevisser.4 Zackie Achmat’s Apostles of Civilised Vice (1999) and Gerald Kraak’s Property of the State: Gay Men in the Apartheid Military (2003) followed.5 All three documentaries are invaluable anthologies of South African queer histories.

• 6 Although Quest for Love was shot and completed in 1987, it received its first public screenings at (...)

5Notwithstanding, there is no consensus on South Africa’s first queer film. Most opinions fluctuate between one of two feature-length films released in the same year: Helena Nogueira’s Quest for Love (1987) and Cedric Sundström’s The Shadowed Mind (1988) (Jackson and Tapp 1997; Saks 2010; Modisane 2013; Osinubi 2019; Botha 2020).6 Some claim the distinction belongs to a much later production, Proteus (2003) (Munro 2010; Schoonover and Galt 2016). Many scholars celebrate documentaries instead for their “honesty” as the ultimate expression of “gay filmmaking” (Krouse 2006, 12), with Ricardo Peach (2007, 67) suggesting John Greyson’s documentary A Moffie Called Simon (1986)—about the political and AIDS activist Simon Nkoli—as being the first “ever on Queer lives in South Africa.”

• 7 B.M. is an abbreviation of “Baby Maker” and denotes a heterosexual person (Cage 2003, 55).

7I use the term queer to signify resistance, non-conformity, and fluidity in terms of gender identity, sexual orientation, and social categories. It is an identity that revolts against heteronormativity. This definition aligns with Patrick E. Johnson’s (2008) assertion that sexual practice does not determine queerness. Rather than being defined by sexual practice, queerness functions as a tool for disrupting established norms and hierarchies, advocating for more fluid and inclusive understandings of identity and experience, and offering alternative ways to resist dominant power structures. In the context of this paper and South Africa, Salwyn Hurwitz, whose films feature in this paper, wrote in his memoirs that in 1940s South Africa, “the words GAY or STRAIGHT were unknown words, you were either QUEER or B.M.” (GALA, AM2709, A.1.22).7

• 8 See also Mark Gevisser and Edwin Cameron, Defiant Desire (1995); Robert Morrell, Changing Men (2001 (...)

8Through analysis and support from archival records, audio recordings and other documentary sources, this paper provides evidence of a revolutionary queer underground film movement primarily situated in Durban, which predates current scholarship by four decades. These previously unknown underground films also point to alternative queer geographies in a city with a thriving multiracial queer community and culture, which support some of the groundbreaking scholarships on historical queer lives in South Africa.8 Evidence shows that one person was at the centre of this small but historically important production movement: Ernest Thorp.

• 9 Interviews with over fifty queer men and women about their experiences during the 1950s and 60s wer (...)
• 10 GALA was founded in 1997 by Graeme Reid and supported by the South African History Archive (SAHA). (...)

9In 1997, the GALA Queer Archive (GALA) launched an Oral History Project in cooperation with Gevisser to support his research for the screenplay of Schiller’s documentary film about Cecil Williams, The Man Who Drove with Mandela (1998).9 At the same time, Zackie Achmat was working on his film about South Africa’s queer histories, Apostles of Civilised Vice (1999), in conjunction with GALA, with the researchers and producers often interviewing the same people and covering similar subjects.10 The subsequent interviews and items collected in the process included the discovery of a series of short films attributed to Ernest Thorp, who was described as “one of the social leaders of Durban’s white, gay male world” during the 1940s, 50s and 60s (GALA 2021, 71).

• 11 My primary source was internationally renowned horticulturist Keith Kirsten, a former student, love (...)

10Researchers knew very little about Thorp in the 1990s, except that he was the curator of the Durban Botanic Gardens (1950–75) and established an orchid display house in 1962, subsequently named in his honour. However, when I started my research in 2020, some unexplored archival sources in GALA, personal correspondence with a small network of horticultural students mentored by Thorp in the 1970s, genealogy websites, print archives and other sources proved illuminating.11

• 12 Durban Camera Club (website). Accessed April 14, 2023. https://www.durbancameraclub.co.za/. Archive (...)
• 13 Thorp was good friends with a (unnamed) “famous Kodak Agent” (Keith Kirsten, personal communication (...)
• 14 Undated newspaper clipping circa 1948, likely from The Natal Mercury, from the personal scrapbook o (...)

11Ernest Reed Thorp (1911–98) was born in Queenstown. Thorp’s interest in photography came from his father, Herbert, who founded the Durban Amateur Photographic Society in 1921.12 Access to like-minded members and industry professionals through the society would explain how Thorp arranged for the queer and sometimes homoerotic footage he filmed to be clandestinely processed and developed.13 During WWII, while working as an apprentice horticulturalist, Thorp established himself as a prominent social figure in Durban. Unable to enlist in the Royal Navy during the war, he opted to “entertain as many visiting naval men as possible at his home in Durban,” becoming a “mentor” to many (emphasis mine).14

• 15 South African Garden & Home, May 1972.
• 16 Undated newspaper clipping from the personal scrapbook of Salwyn Hurwitz, GALA, AM2709 A22c. See: “ (...)
• 17 Ibid.

12At the time, Thorp met Admiral Middleton, a commander of a British battleship anchored in Durban, who shared his interest in orchids and invited him to visit him back in England.15 On May 1, 1948, Thorp arrived in England aboard the Umtali. When, after a few months in Britain, Thorp could not secure passage back to South Africa, Admiral Middleton offered to transport Thorp back to South Africa as a guest of the Royal Navy as repayment for “the kindness he had shown to hundreds of sailors.”16 Thorp returned to South Africa in September 1948 after being given one of the Admiral’s cabins on HMS Jutland, part of a squadron visiting the Union. Thorp entertained the sailors on HMS Jutland during his return journey, showing “several films he had taken of places of interest” in South Africa.17

• 18 South African Garden & Home, May 1972.
• 19 Ibid.
• 20 The Natal Mercury, August 22, 1972.
• 21 Keith Kirsten, personal communication, May 24, 2022.
• 22 Keith Kirsten, personal communication, January 11, 2022.

13Thorp was an international authority on orchids and travelled the world collecting specimens. In addition to accompanying luminaries such as General Jan Smuts on plant-collecting trips in the Drakensberg, he had lunch with the King of Thailand at his palace.18 Thorp also met Queen Elizabeth—when she visited Durban along with King George VI and princesses Elizabeth and Margaret in 1947—taking her on a tour of the Botanic Gardens.19 Shortly before his retirement, Thorp presented a paper at the 7th World Orchid Conference in Colombia in 1972.20 Thorp was utterly discreet and private, always conscious of his position as curator of the Botanic Gardens.21 His students remember him being an “avid photographer and cinematographer,” showing them many films and slide shows of his international travels.22

• 23 See Ricardo Peach (2005, 2007).

14Only two of Thorp’s films—Nil Desperandum and Faux Pas de Deux—have previously been documented.23 However, neither has been conclusively dated, as neither film contains any attributable credits. What has never been in doubt is that both films are unquestionably queer in narrative and mise en scène and require no extraordinary decoding, queering, or reading in the way mainstream films of the time would necessitate.

• 24 Joe Garmeson (1928–2003) was the secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Fund. It was launched to ra (...)
• 25 Based on the evidence, we can conclusively assume that Faux Pas de Deux was produced in 1955 and th (...)
• 26 Graeme Reid, personal communication, November 3, 2020.
• 27 Ibid.

15The archival evidence I uncovered and explored in this paper suggests that either Joe Garmeson or Salwyn Hurwitz, who were both mentored by Thorp, donated Nil Desperandum to GALA.24 The bulk of films—almost 3 hours’ worth of previously undocumented short films on 8mm and 16mm, hereafter referred to as the Hurwitz Collection—were donated by Hurwitz and included Faux Pas de Deux, despite its original 16mm film box specifying its content as “Ken’s Ballet, May 1955” (Figure 1).25 Despite the title card contradicting the inscription, Graeme Reid, the founder of GALA, assures me that the film on the 16mm film reel contained Faux Pas de Deux when it was digitised in 1997.26 Reid recalls that the films arrived somewhat unexpectedly “through a connection of someone interviewed for the oral history project, while Thorp himself was not.”27 A separate videocassette contained Nil Desperandum, hence the uncertainty of its source. Both films have a distinguishing pink and red hue due to the colour fading of the cyan dye.

• 28 Archived on Nakala, with kind permission from GALA Queer Archive: https://doi.org/10.34847/NKL.E9AE (...)

17Like many of the films discussed in this paper, Thorp’s Faux Pas de Deux (1955) was inspired by ballet. The three-and-a-half-minute silent curiosity set in a garden portrays two men—one dressed as a ballerina—performing the entrée and adagio of the black swan pas de deux from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (Figure 2).28

• 29 See Roland Zavada (1970) on the introduction of Super 8. From the box which contained its original (...)

19Extracts from Nil Desperandum feature in Achmat’s documentary Apostles of Civilised Vice (1999), wherein he accurately describes it as a “Queer underground film.” However, in the film, Achmat suggests it was made in 1960. Peach (2007, 52) also claims that Nil Desperandum contained South Africa’s “first openly Queer images of the 1960s.” His claim that Thorp’s “home-made” film was shot on Super 8mm added another potential obstacle to dating it since Super 8 film was first introduced by Kodak in 1965 (Peach 2005, 97; 2007, 56).29 Similarly, GALA’s most recent catalogue claims that Nil Desperandum was produced in the early 1960s (GALA 2021, 7).

• 30 Archived on Nakala, with kind permission from GALA Queer Archive: https://doi.org/10.34847/NKL.A056 (...)
• 31 To date, I have been unable to verify Mipsie’s identity.

20Nil Desperandum is a short silent film with a dense and meaningful narrative packed into six minutes. It tells the story of two camp men cruising for sailors at the Durban harbour.30 As the opening credits roll, one of the men is introduced as Mipsie, “the grand old lady of the screen,” who has a penchant for wearing women’s underwear (Figure 3–4).31 The other is a significantly younger man, whom the narrative suggests is being mentored by Mipsie. On their way to the harbour, they pass two camp sailors in their vehicle and stop to talk to them. Perhaps they are asking for directions, but more likely cruising (Figure 5). At the docks, they come across two butch sailors whom they pick up and drive to a secluded spot in the countryside for a picnic (Figure 6). After some drinking and flirting, Mipsie collapses into the lap of one of the sailors. A cut focuses on the aftermath of the picnic before the camera pans up and focuses on a large bush. Another cut shows clothes and underwear strewn across the branches, blowing in the wind (Figure 7) before the dishevelled sailors appear from inside the bush, one by one. The mise en scène irrefutably implies that the men have just had sex with Mipsie and the young man.

• 32 GALA, AM2580. Archived on Nakala, with kind permission from GALA queer archive: https://doi.org/10. (...)
• 33 GALA, AM2580 O1.4.

25A recording in GALA’s archives of a conversation between Reid and Garmeson provides a decisive piece of the puzzle as to the provenance of Nil Desperandum and, significantly, reveals the potential existence of other previously undocumented queer films of the time.32 We hear Garmeson describing a series of photographs captioned “Fashion Parade, Jameson Park, Ascension Day, 1951” while paging through one of his photo albums.33 In the process, he alludes to two films being shot on that day:

• 35 GALA, AM2580.

28Reid asks whether the “[Jameson Park] film was made as a riposte to a previous film,” to which Garmeson responds: “Oh yes, yes, that was a colour film that was made by my mentor as a matter of fact […] and as you say, this [Jameson Park film] was I think more or less the kind of ‘I can do this too’ sort of thing” (emphasis mine).35 Garmeson then describes the earlier film made by his “mentor.” The narrative matches Nil Desperandum perfectly:

• 36 I subsequently verified Ernest Thorp’s identity from photographs in Keith Kirsten’s private collect (...)
• 37 Nil Desperandum, 01:21 to 01:33. Monty also features in the [lost] Jameson Park films produced by G (...)

29Garmeson’s testimony dates the production of Nil Desperandum to early 1951 at the latest, as Ascension Day fell on May 3 that year. Crucially, Garmeson identifies Thorp amongst his photographs, albeit only ever referring to him as his “mentor.” The two pictures of Thorp, dated 1949 and 1951, are captioned “Ernest” in Garmeson’s photo album, which allows us to put a face to the name for the first time (Figure 14).36 In addition, Garmeson’s “Durban 1949” group photograph, which includes Thorp, helps to identify two more people starring in Nil Desperandum: the first two sailors Mipsie talks to in the film are Chick and Monty (Figure 15–16).37

• 38 See also Figures 13-15, 17 and 18.

30Finally, Ernest Thorp’s clothes in the film Durban (1949) match those in the “Durban 1949” photograph in Joe Garmeson’s album (Figure 17). As such, the cross-referencing of analogous archival resources from different sources conclusively dates the film Durban beyond a reasonable doubt, contributes to Thorp’s identification, and suggests the earliest possible production date for Nil Desperandum (Figure 18).38 Considering all the evidence, I can conclude, beyond doubt, that Nil Desperandum was produced between 1949 and May 1951.

• 39 GALA, AM2709, A.1.22.

33Mipsie’s possible participation in the making of Nil Desperandum (circa 1949–51) and Garmeson’s testimony that his [lost] Jameson Park films were a collective effort made me question the attribution of absolute authorship of some of the Hurwitz Collection to a single person. Finding a memoir, scrapbooks, and a collection of previously undocumented short films from the personal collection of Salwyn Hurwitz at GALA in May 2022 confirmed my suspicions. Furthermore, it provided evidence of a more extensive social network of friends—and sometimes family—who participated in a prolific output of queer short films and documentaries in the 1940s–50s, and up to the early 1970s.39

• 40 The only film from the Hurwitz Collection which contains distinguishable credits is a short travel (...)
• 41 Some examples of underground anti-apartheid films are Elaine Proctor’s The Sun Will Rise (1981), an (...)

35The lack of attributable credits on the films probably attests to the fact that Thorp and Hurwitz understood the subversive nature of their work and demanded and maintained some discretion to protect the identities of the people involved in the production just in case the films were ever discovered.40 It also underlines the revolutionary aspect of their films, which aligns them with subsequent radical filmmaking movements, most notably some anti-apartheid short films made during the 1980s—some with queer subjects—which contained no attributable credits either.41

• 42 See transcript of Reid’s interview with Garmeson on January 2, 1997, GALA, AM2580.
• 43 According to Kirsten, Hurwitz was fondly known as “Chunky” by all his friends (Keith Kirsten, perso (...)
• 44 One of Hurwitz's films, The Kraal (circa 1947), shows Preller at a Ndebele village, where he found (...)

36In his interviews with Reid, Garmeson explained that a “crowd” revolved around Thorp in Durban.42 Among this collective of friends were some, including Garmeson, who were inspired and probably encouraged by Thorp to try their hand at filmmaking. The evidence collected by GALA from Thorp’s most productive collaborator, Salwyn “Chunky” Hurwitz (1920–2011), a young dancer who met Thorp in Durban after joining the Royal Navy at nineteen to serve as a telegraphist on several ships, attests to that.43 Hurwitz’s scrapbooks are an assemblage of over 400 pages of notes, newspaper clippings and mementoes about the lives of personal connections, lovers and friends—a veritable who-is-who of South Africa’s white queer cultural society in the 1940s–60s. Names include icons from stage and screen, the fashion world, artists and musicians, including Noël Coward, Cecil Williams, Leontine Sagan, Andre Huguenet, Siegfried Mynhardt, Ivor Kirsten, Alexis Preller44 and Terence McGaw. One of the most significant aspects of the Hurwitz Collection is that it establishes a relationship between Thorp and Hurwitz that spans four decades, from their first known collaboration in 1940 until 1974, when they were filmed together on holiday in Lourenço Marques [now Maputo].

• 45 A fact confirmed by Keith Kirsten, who was one of Thorp’s lovers in the mid to late 1960s (Keith Ki (...)
• 46 Hurwitz’s scrapbook contains similar personal mementoes from other lovers and leading queer figures (...)

37Whether their association stems from Thorp’s hospitality to the many sailors he entertained and mentored during the war or through a family connection, there is no doubt that the two men were, at some point, lovers.45 Hurwitz’s scrapbook contains a note from Thorp with a pressed flower and foliage: “To Remember This Day, Ernest R. Thorp, 24-2-40, Inanda Falls,” a memento valuable enough for Hurwitz to preserve it in his scrapbook for posterity (Figure 20).46 Evidently, the romance did not last longer than a few years, but they remained close friends and collaborators for life. Thorp filmed several of their holidays together. Several reels comprising sightseeing trips throughout Natal [now KwaZulu-Natal]—often with their mothers Myrtle and Becky—contain several adoring shots of Hurwitz.

• 47 Alty performed as Carmen Miranda at several public fundraisers including at the Library Theatre in (...)
• 48 We know from Hurwitz’s scrapbooks that he saw the The Dying Swan performed professionally several t (...)

38Hurwitz and Thorp’s first collaboration was The Dying Duck (1940), featuring Ed Alty, a popular burlesque artist during the war years who worked as a window dresser at Ansteys department store in Johannesburg.47 In the film, Alty, in the guise of Carmen Miranda, parodies The Dying Swan—a short ballet made famous by Anna Pavlova in 1907 (Figure 21).48 Billed as “a Hurthorp Speciality,” complete with title and end-title (Figure 22), The Dying Duck displays some of Thorp and Hurwitz’s titling skills, which is also evident in some of their later films. The level of sophistication of some of the films regarding narrative, production values, editing, and title cards suggest that Thorp and Hurwitz had access to more advanced equipment such as a film editor viewer, splicer, and titling kit.

• 49 GALA, AM2709, A.1.22.
• 50 An inscription on the original film box suggests that Black & White Dying Swan was filmed in 1946, (...)
• 51 GALA, AM2709, A.1.22.

39In his memoirs, Hurwitz describes filming several performances of Alty on the roof garden of the Clyde Buildings—where he lived in Johannesburg—and Alty’s roof garden nearby.49 The most significant rooftop films in the Hurwitz Collection are Black & White Dying Swan (1946), Presenting the Famous Star of the Metropolitan Opera Co. Ed Altie [sic] (circa 1940s), and Romeo & Juliet (circa 1940s) (Figure 23–24).50 Black & White Dying Swan is also a comedic parody of Pavlova’s The Dying Swan, but it was filmed here with remarkable skill and composition. Hurwitz recalls that for the film, Alty made his false eyelashes by cutting off small pieces of coir from a broom, glueing them to a piece of cloth before curling them with wave tongs and sticking them on his eyelids (Figure 25).51 Respectively, Presenting the Famous Star of the Metropolitan Opera Co. Ed Altie [sic] and Romeo & Juliet feature Hurwitz’s younger brother, Louis, as Alty’s suitor and his sister, Judy, in a cross-dressing turn as Romeo.

• 52 Ibid.
• 53 Poppins Salomon, who was from Durban, was a likely source of the Pavlova inspired dance sequences. (...)
• 54 GALA, AM2709, A.1.22.

43According to Hurwitz, Alty often dressed up in Judy’s stage clothes,52 who was studying with internationally renowned South African dancer Poppins Salomon at the time.53 Judy, Salwyn, and his brothers, Louis and Morris, would sometimes dress up and do ad-lib performances with Alty. Hurwitz always did the filming unless featured and would get one of his brothers to take the camera (Figure 26–27).54

• 55 Untitled is dated 1940 as it appears on the same 16mm film reel as The Dying Duck and attributed to (...)

44Another film featuring Alty is Thorp’s Untitled (1940), a somewhat unsophisticated collection of scenes featuring Alty and Hurwitz in drag as two prostitutes solicited by a businessman and a sailor, performed by Judy Hurwitz (Figure 28).55 Note that Judy is wearing the same naval uniform as the sailors in Nil Desperandum (circa 1949–51), most likely that of Salwyn, who was then serving in the Royal Navy. The short documentary Durban (1949), another Hurwitz and Thorp collaboration, features a ballet sequence on Durban’s Addington beach (Figure 29).

• 56 GALA, AM2709 A22c.
• 57 Keith Kirsten, personal communication, May 24, 2022.

46Hurwitz and Thorp’s films shot on Durban’s beaches provide a fascinating record of the extent of their wide-reaching social network and include several collaborators, including Noël Coward, in a film I have titled Durban (1949) (Figure 30). Despite the resemblance, I have not unequivocally confirmed that it is Coward on the beach with Thorp. However, archival records show that Hurwitz met with Coward and collected his autograph at the Alexandria Fleet Club, Egypt, while stationed there in 1943 during World War II (Figure 30).56 Keith Kirsten also confirmed that Coward visited Thorp and Hurwitz in Durban several times after the war.57

• 58 The clips from the Hurwitz Collection were not attributed, most likely because they were considered (...)

47Men dancing with each other and doing ballet have long been considered queer signifiers in early South African cinema. Scenes from such films feature in Schiller’s and Achmat’s documentaries, The Man Who Drove with Mandela (1998) and Apostles of Civilised Vice (1999), respectively, along with clips from the Hurwitz Collection.58 As such, Peach (2007, 58) claims that the “Queer signifiers” in Nil Desperandum (circa 1949–51) and Faux Pas de Deux (1955)—and for that matter, the Hurwitz Collection—link Thorp’s films to popular “mainstream” Afrikaans comedy films of the 1950s and 60s which featured “central male characters comfortable as ‘feminised’ subjects.”

• 59 Hurwitz’s scrapbooks indicate that he was also friends with Al Debbo some years before his cinemati (...)
• 60 Kom Saam Vanaand (1949) is best translated as “Come along tonight.”
• 61 See Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990).
• 62 Hier’s Ons Weer (1950) translates as “Here we are again.”
• 63 Alles Sal Regkom (1951) translates as “Everything will turn out all right.”
• 64 Altyd in My Drome (1952) translates as “Always in my dreams.”
• 65 Dis Lekker om te Lewe (1957) translates as “It is good to be alive.”
• 66 Fratse in die Vloot (1958) translates as “Buffoonery in the Navy” and was a hugely successful propa (...)

48The so-called queer signifiers from early cinema are derived mainly from the queer antics of the comedy duo Frederik Burgers and Al Debbo, the most popular actors at the time, who appeared together in five films.59 Their adolescent behaviour and unconscious affection for each other are reminiscent of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and their characters often reference classic Hollywood films such as The Keystone Cops. Their first film together was Pierre de Wet’s Kom Saam Vanaand (1949),60 in which Burgers portrays a frumpy older woman, a character that would become his trademark. As their popularity grew, the gender performativity in their films became more nuanced and complex.61 In Hyman Kirstein’s Hier’s Ons Weer (1950),62 Debbo plays both a baby and its mother. Later in the film, as two blundering detectives, Burgers and Debbo perform a slow dance after Debbo’s interest is piqued by Burgers’ turn as an Egyptian belly dancer; they also share a bed and, in the end credits, walk hand in hand into the night. In Hyman Kirstein’s Alles Sal Regkom (1951),63 while dancing hula in a grass skirt on a beach, Debbo is attracted when a temptress—a burly man with a blonde wig and a moustache wearing a bikini top and hula skirt—flirts and bats her eyes at him. Pierre de Wet’s Altyd in My Drome (1952),64 Dis Lekker om te Lewe (1957),65 and Fratse in die Vloot (1958) serve up more queer antics involving Burgers and Debbo.66 There are several instances of cross-dressing in both films. Dis Lekker om te Lewe raises the subject of transsexualism, and in the final act of Fratse in die Vloot, the pair perform a pas des deux with, somewhat unusually, Debbo in a tutu.

• 67 Rand Daily Mail, December 14, 1940. The revue broke records and it is estimated that over 50,000 pe (...)
• 68 Rand Daily Mail, December 14, 1940.
• 69 Rand Daily Mail, December 14, and 27, 1940.

49Men in drag—or sashaying around in tutus—was not an uncommon sight on stage in South Africa. America’s first cultural export to Africa—blackface minstrel shows with its ubiquitous drag performances—became the most popular form of entertainment among British settlers in the Cape and Natal Colonies in the late 19th century (Thelwell 2020). Springbok Frolics, initially titled Full Speed Ahead, was a revue “by soldiers for soldiers” at Potchefstroom military camp in the 1940s; it was so successful that civilian audiences demanded to see it.67 The revue with a cast of sixty-five soldiers featured “a corps de ballet, a troupe of ‘Tiller Girls,’ sketches and female impersonators,” including a parody of Hitler.68 One of the drag numbers was Ballet de Roses, performed by eight hefty artillerymen wearing tutus under the direction of Lance-Bombardier Max Melmed, a.k.a. Maximenia Melmedia, a 6-foot tall ballerina, and her corps de ballet.69 Hurwitz attended the revue in Johannesburg and preserved the programme in his scrapbook and other personal mementoes (Figure 32).

• 70 Films were regulated and controlled by the Entertainments Censorship Act No. 28 of 1931 until it wa (...)
• 71 Archived on Nakala, with kind permission from GALA queer archive: https://doi.org/10.34847/NKL.E3F0 (...)

51Male intimacy and homoeroticism are recurring themes in the collection of Thorp/Hurwitz films, with Nil Desperandum (circa 1949–51) arguably the most explicit with its uninhibited cruising and tacit sexual encounter. A subversive act, by any measure, considering that censorship prohibited nudity and sexual imagery, acts deemed “offensive to decency,” or depictions of “vice or loose morals.”70 By definition, this would have included queer cinematic images. An earlier film, A Sensation in Any Setting (1942), attributed to Thorp, is more demonstrative.71 The film is a collection of scenes on the rooftop of Clyde Buildings in Johannesburg, including a burlesque by Hurwitz and his siblings. Significantly, the film also contains an intimate show of affection between Hurwitz and two other young men while in conversation on the rooftop. One of the men opens a newspaper and points at something, which makes them laugh. While the three men are huddled together, Hurwitz delicately runs his fingers through the man’s hair to his left (Figure 33).

• 72 Archived on Nakala, with kind permission from GALA Queer Archive: https://doi.org/10.34847/NKL.B2CB (...)

53A film capturing a seemingly innocuous holiday with friends in the Drakensberg, Royal Natal National Park (1947), directed by Thorp, contains the most homoerotic scenes in the Hurwitz Collection.72 The film includes a discontinuous sequence of men, including Hurwitz, who take turns undressing and frolicking naked in rock pools (Figure 34). The men visibly engage with Thorp, who is giving them directions on what to do.

• 73 The film is dated 1942 because it includes scenes identified with an inter-title card: “Chief Shemb (...)
• 74 See the Immorality Act No. 5 of 1927, the Immorality Amendment Act No. 21 of 1950, and the Immorali (...)
• 75 See Manthia Diawara, African Cinema (1992); Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, Black African Cinema (1994); I (...)

55An earlier film, Thorp and Hurwitz’s Cathedral Peak (1942), filmed during a family and friends visit to the Drakensberg, also contains shots of two unidentified men in the Thorp/Hurwitz party swimming naked in a mountain pool.73 Cathedral Peak also includes the attendance of a Zulu wedding, which implies that someone in the Thorp or Hurwitz families had close relations with a Zulu family or village. However, one of the most surprising revelations of the film is shots of an unidentified Zulu man walking along a river and bathing in the nude (Figure 35). He smiles and interacts as he walks along the river, indicating that he knows the cameraman and has consented to being filmed. Such eroticism and intimacy between a white filmmaker and his black subject are strikingly unexpected for a film shot in 1942, especially since successive South African governments legislated to keep races apart. Sex “between whites and Africans” was first outlawed in 1927, a prohibition extended by the apartheid government in 1950—around the time Nil Desperandum was produced—to include all non-whites (Dugard 1978, 70).74 The presence of such intimacy in this context challenges not only the state’s racial policies but also highlights the power dynamics and objectification inherent in interracial eroticism which, in colonial and apartheid South Africa—and the rest of Africa—often exoticised and dehumanised black bodies on film.75

• 76 See Zackie Achmat’s Apostles of Civilised Vice (1999).

56This paper is not blind to the lack of intersectionality between the marginalisation of queer people and the marginalisation of people because of their race. Yet, despite the lack of social integration between South Africans of all races—one of the great tragedies of colonialism and apartheid—it did not prevent men of all races from having sex or eroticising each other.76

• 77 GALA AM2580.
• 78 Sunday Tribune, September 23, 1956.
• 79 Natal Daily News, July 23, 1956.
• 80 Sunday Tribune, August 19, 1956.

57Joe Garmeson’s GALA testimonies, photo albums and scrapbooks about the social lives of queer men in Durban in the 1950s, along with the surviving Thorp/Hurwitz films, support the evidence on Durban’s liberal queer history and geography. Garmeson kept an album with press cuttings reporting on “indecency” cases in Durban involving men of all races, as well as attacks on and prosecution of many people he knew personally.77 Durban’s Victoria Embankment and Esplanade were popular places where queer men of all races went cruising. In 1956, after a crackdown by the police “to stop the queer goings-on,”78 a Durban magistrate referred to the Victoria Embankment as “a den of iniquity” before sentencing a group of eight men—which included an “Indian labourer” and “three Natives”—to prison for offences which he considered “an outrage against common decency and the law of nature.”79 Accusations were levelled against the arresting policemen for using perfume and other devices “calculated to attract attention.”80 Despite the social and economic hierarchy which resulted from the progressively draconian laws imposed on society by the apartheid government, race was not a barrier to sexual encounters, certainly not in Durban.

• 81 Golden City Post, September 4, 1955, and Golden City Post, January 29, 1956.
• 82 Beeld, March 13, 1966.
• 83 Beeld, April 17, 1966.

58Reports of contraventions of the Immorality Act regularly made the news.81 By the mid-1960s, references to Durban as the “Sodom of South Africa” were commonplace.82 Durban became notorious for its multiracial parties in well-known nightclubs attended “by homosexuals from across the country.”83 There were also reports of secret multiracial orgies at luxury homes, skinny-dipping beach parties and swingers’ events frequented by Durban’s wealthy and elite.

• 84 See several contributions in Gevisser and Cameron, Defiant Desire.
• 85 The area is interchangeably known as Cato Manor and Mkhumbane. Recent scholarship suggests that the (...)
• 86 Previously referred to as Esinyameni by several scholars including Edwards (1996), Louw (2001), Hun (...)

60Decades of meticulous research and interviews with the Izingqingili zaseMkhumbane (the homosexuals of Mkhumbane) have led Iain Edwards to conclude that Durban was the site of “South Africa’s first publicly homosexual residential city community” established in the 1930s (2020, 119). As with District Six in Cape Town,84 homosexuality was openly expressed in Mkhumbane, a shantytown in Durban (Bickford-Smith 2016).85 An openly queer community, defined by hierarchical solid social patterns, lived in a distinct section of Mkhumbane, now called Emnyameni (Edwards 2020).86 The celebration of queer identities by the community in Mkhumbane was unusual and stood in direct contrast with the dominant images of African masculinity of the time.

• 87 Archived on Nakala, with kind permission form GALA Queer Archive: https://doi.org/10.34847/NKL.5733 (...)

61Mkhumbane’s multicultural character is beautifully illustrated in Thorp and Hurwitz’s short Kavadi Celebration (circa 1947) (Figure 37).87 The Kavadi Festival is a sacred Hindu ceremony, especially popular with Tamil-speaking Hindus, and considered the most important Indian festival in South Africa (Naidoo 1981). The festival worships Lord Muruga and is celebrated in Durban with a procession that starts at the Second River Temple. Thorp and Hurwitz’s film shows worshippers piercing their bodies with hooks and miniature spears along a grand procession through the surrounding hills, watched on by thousands of people lining the roads. Interestingly, since the 1950s, Hindu weddings in Durban have featured performances by “men dressed in female clothing” (Louw 2001, 296, n2).

• 88 It is unlikely that Louw (2001) is referring to the same Alison Khumalo interviewed by Achmat and E (...)
• 89 Epprecht and Edwards (2020, 227) suggest that the isiZulu word isitabane is now regarded as a homop (...)
• 90 Mkhumbane (Cato Manor) was roughly fourteen minutes’ (8 km) drive from the Botanic Gardens.

63Kavadi Celebration (circa 1947) confirms that Thorp and Hurwitz visited Mkhumbane on at least one occasion. Recent scholarship suggests interesting social and etymological links between Mkhumbane and the area around the Botanical Gardens, where Thorp worked and lived. Louw (2001, 290) recounts evidence from “a man by the name of Khumalo” who lived near the Botanic Gardens when he first moved to Durban.88 Khumalo knew an old man, Alfred Mkhize, who was “a big isitabane, like a king or chairman of the gays” who worked and stayed in the backyard of Mrs Cohen and also “knew what Alfred was” (Ibid.).89 Khumalo recalls how he and Alfred “used to dress up […] with skins and titties” and be driven to Mkhumbane on weekends by Mrs Cohen (Ibid.).90

• 91 GALA, AM2709.
• 92 I have been in contact with Thorp’s niece, Lesley—his brother Raymond’s daughter—who had no knowled (...)
• 93 Keith Kirsten, personal communication, May 24, 2022. To date, we have not been able to locate copie (...)

64Had it not been for Hurwitz’s proclivity for collection and preservation, and ultimately GALA’s Oral History Projects,91 most of the films analysed in this paper would not have survived. The films that make up the Hurwitz Collection—primarily produced by Thorp and Hurwitz—shift our knowledge of queer cultural production on film in South Africa back to at least 1940. Thorp was inevitably making films before he met Hurwitz. However, we must presume that all his films, except for Nil Desperandum, Faux Pas de Deux and the films that emerged from his collaboration with Hurwitz, are lost.92 Thorp had an agreement with a close friend that whoever died first would immediately go to the other’s home and remove and destroy their collections of films and books which might be deemed offensive, not only by the authorities but also their families, who might not have been aware of their sexualities.93 Hopefully, more Thorp and Hurwitz films will be discovered in time. What is certain is that their collection of films holds many more secrets that will be revealed and that more of the people featured in the films will be identified. However, there is still much work to do to achieve that.

• 94 Thorp held screenings for his friends and students at private social events at his flat near the Bo (...)

66Although Thorp and Hurwitz’s chronicling of their queer social lives and Ed Alty’s comic ballet parodies, such as The Dying Duck, predate Nil Desperandum, the latter is, without doubt, Thorp’s singular narrative accomplishment. Made by queers for consumption by a queer audience,94 Nil Desperandum is unequivocally queer in narrative and mise en scène. The film requires no extraordinary decoding, queering, or reading in the way that so-called mainstream films of the time would necessitate. As such, this paper proves that Nil Desperandum is not your run-of-the-mill “home-made” film, as Peach (2007) suggests. As South Africa’s earliest known work of queer cinematic fiction—for the moment at least—Nil Desperandum establishes Thorp as a pioneer of queer cinema in South Africa.