Licensed to Kill

In 1977, exactly twenty years ago, filmmaker Arthur Dong escaped a bunch of ‘queer-bashers‘ by the skin of his teeth in San Francisco. Since then he not only feels unsafe on the street, but also wonders where the enormous hate and outbursts of violence against homosexuals come from. In his poignant documentary Licensed to Kill, winning the prize for best direction at the latest ‘Sundance festival’, he visits convicted murderers of homosexuals in various American prisons and puts the same simple question to them over and over: ‘Why did you do it?‘. Nearly always the answer is that the assassin felt it was justified to kill. They often refer to the Bible and sometimes to ‘knowledge’ they acquired from an encyclopedia that was published only recently. Their self-image is defined by the feeling that society has given them a so-called ‘license to kill’. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)