KISS-O-DROME

Johan Grimonprez, Belgium
story written & narrated by Eduardo Galeano
fragment from Shadow World
2016, 1 min 16 sec

In 1980 an extraordinary demonstration hit the streets of the Brazilian city of Sorocaba. Under the military dictatorship, a court had outlawed kisses that undermined public morals. The ruling by Judge Manuel Moralles, which punished such kisses with jail terms, described them this way: “some kisses are libidinous and therefore obscene, like a kiss on the neck, on the private parts, etc., and like the cinematographic kiss in which the labial mucosa come together in an unsophismable expansion of sensuality.” The city responded by becoming one huge kissodrome. Never had people kissed so much. Prohibition sparked desire and many were those who out of simple curiosity wanted a taste of the unsophismable kiss.