Mansfield 1962

Directed by William E. Jones

In the summer of 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio, Police Department photographed men having sex in a public restroom under the main square of the city. A cameraman hid in a closet and watched the clandestine activities through a two-way mirror. He filmed over a three week period, and the resulting movie was used to obtain the convictions of over 30 local men on charges of sodomy. With some of this footage the Mansfield Police later produced Camera Surveillance, an instructional film circulated in law enforcement circles. It showed how to set up a sting operation to film and arrest “sex deviants.” A degraded version of the film found on the internet was reedited to make Mansfield 1962, a haunting, silent condensation of the original.