Pristine Condition

Documentary about the gender-bending San Francisco performance group who became a pop culture phenomenon in the early 1970s.

The world-famous Cockettes enact Tricia Nixon's wedding to Edward Cox on June 11, 1971. Hurtme O. Hurtme, television correspondent, covers the wedding and interviews celebrities in attendance such as Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Jacqueline Onassis, Queen Elizabeth, and Elizabeth Taylor. Coretta King sings. During the reception, Eartha Kitt puts LSD in the punch. All hell breaks loose.

ELEVATOR GIRLS IN BONDAGE ups the ante by taking on not just the Republicans but the entire capitalist system and its oppression of the working class. The underpaid staff of a seedy hotel rises up in revolt, and by the time head elevator girl Maxine (the fabulous Rumi) starts spouting a surreal mix of folk songs and Marxist maxims, followed by an uproariously explicit sex scene, you’ll be ready to join the cause. Rarely has the dissection of economic exploitation been so silly, or so much fun to watch.

Peter Berlin's alter ego Helmut drifts around south of Market and Polk Street areas of San Francisco. When Helmut meets a blind boy (Arron Black) and becomes fascinated by him, the film begins a series of fantasies within fantasies that quickly take it into another realm.