“Second Skin” is an experimental documentary short illuminating the joy and complexity of kink through the stories of queer women active in the 1980s Bay Area leather scene. Using hand-drawn animations to bring oral history to life, the film’s artistic lens reimagines the queer archive as a sensual, subjective experience.
Research for the film draws on Bay Area queer archival sources, including the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Historical Society and the Bay Area Lesbian Archives (BALA), as well as oral histories from people active in the 1980s Bay Area leather dyke scene about their stories of finding love, heartbreak, community, pleasure, and political consciousness.
“Second Skin” explores themes of queer sexuality with animated sequences that are uncensored, sexy, and aim to titillate the audience at times, as well as respond to the emotional tone of the interviews. “Second Skin” both challenges the mainstream tendency towards the sanitization of queerness in order to make it more palatable as well as disseminating queer stories that were historically hidden due to conditions of censorship and criminalization.
A main goal of “Second Skin” is to foster intergenerational connections between contemporary queer audiences and the generations of queer elders that came before. Learning from the success and mistakes of how people found community and pursued pleasure in the past under very difficult circumstances can inspire today's young queer kinky people.