"You never really know what’s real."

There are few films that are as raw, transgressive, and viscerally shocking as Juliet Bashore’s 1986 queer docufiction, Kamikaze Hearts – screening as a part of Cinema Rediscovered 2023 in a recently restored version. Nearly forty years after its initial release, it still packs an almighty wallop.

For audiences new to the film, it’s easy to be swept up in its surface level and classification as a documentary – a no-holds-barred examination of the adult entertainment industry in its 'golden age' and the experiences of its performers. But in truth, Kamikaze Hearts is significantly more layered than meets the eye.

Due to constraints while filming and flighty participants who didn’t wish to be incriminated by the United States’ stringent laws on pornography, Bashore got creative. While the actors and situations in Kamikaze Hearts are real, the set for the porn film-within-a-film is artificial.

This, in part, compounds the voyeuristic qualities of both pornography and documentary filmmaking. Some of the crew – those hired for work on what they believe is a legitimate porn production – have no idea as to its falsity. Bashore is astutely aware of the power this grants her while filming too – an environment where she can manipulate the elements to a certain extent, leading to some volatile onscreen exchanges. The film in some ways prophesies a shallow world of 'reality programming', algorithmic content, and a cultural landscape of self-absorption where the whole, unequivocal truth is near impossible to discern.

The uncertainty around “what it is” likewise speaks to its queer aspects. Ubiquitously pigeonholed as a 'lesbian movie' for decades, Kamikaze Hearts dares not to define itself nor the sexual identities of its stars, Sharon Mitchell and Tigr Mennett, in such explicit terms. Bashore was aware of fluctuating levels of polysexuality and attraction that exist in such communities, and at a time when a properly defined queer vocabulary was still basically non-existent, a certain rebelliousness against potentially inaccurate labels being put on her film feels astonishingly inclusive. Still, some aspects of the film show their age, such as a casual usage of the word “transsexual". This is wholly unsurprising for the time period, especially in the contexts of adult performers, but such terminology grates from a modern perspective.

Ultimately, Kamikaze Hearts is an experience that few filmgoers have had the means to engage with properly. Its initial limited release meant the film was not properly accessible for some time. This, too, was compounded by its niche subject matter. Till very recently, bootleg discs and torrent sites were possibly the film’s only distribution routes, and a small but devoted community of cinephiles the only thing keeping interest in the film alive. It is therefore very exciting, and fitting, that Kamikaze Hearts will get not one, but two screenings at the festival for ‘Other Ways of Seeing.’