Stuart Marshall's forceful new film (separately commissioned, but screened in Britain as part of - and the most-watched episode of - Channel Four's lesbian and gay magazine series) isn't just about the holocaust. Sub-headed "Sexuality in Germany 1910-1945", it digs up a whole deal of stories leading to the Nazi extermination of lesbians and gay men. The body and nature worship cult; the deification of same-sex friendships; the growth of gay bars; the persecution of sexual radicals - Marshall's interviews add up to a sharp analysis of the anxieties and inconsistencies in the rise of Nazism. Of course the massacre is a hideous and appalling historical fact. But Desire aims to get more out of the death toll than anger or upset.—Mark Finch

Sexuality in Germany from 1910 to 1945: beginning with back-to-nature mountain camps and schools that fused athleticism, same-sex intimacy, and nudity; the openly-gay bars during the Weimer Republic; and, Nazi suppression of male and female homosexuality. Historians discuss pedagogical Eros, Hirschfeld's theories and his institute of sexual science, and the Nazi's Paragraph 175, which outlawed homosexual behavior. Survivors describe intimidation and interrogation, the flight of friends, Himmler's edicts, and the confinement and death in concentration camps of gay men and women. The documentary ends at Amsterdam's monument to gay victims of the Holocaust.—<[email protected]>