It’s not often you get to see queer lives expressed on camera in a setting that is authentic, open and genuinely representative. It is even more unusual to experience the vulnerable and intimate moments usually reserved for the four walls of a bedroom. In 2009, San Franciscan filmmaker Travis Mathews (best known for Interior. Leather Bar (2013) starring everyone's favourite polymath James Franco) decided to merge these two ideas together and begin what would eventually become an ongoing, multi-city exploration of gay men in their bedrooms, so far reaching San Francisco, London and Berlin. Here is an exclusive deleted scene from the film's DVD, in which we get to be a fly on the wall of artist Brontez Purnell’s bedroom as he plays songs, lays around naked and speaks candidly about sex in his city.

Director Travis Mathews: “The only reason I didn’t include this scene is because I’d already filmed the San Francisco series and completed it as a 20-minute piece. But Brontez is such a stand out performer that he deserves his own episode. He’s a gay, black punk musician, writer, performer, shit-kicker, truth teller and all those things together make him uniquely Brontez. 

I never look for guys who are hot or traditionally sexy or sexy at all. I am always trying to find guys who have something raw, interesting and unique about them but they’re also able to access that and communicate. Brontez is a good example of this. When I started the ‘In Their Room’ series, so many gay representations that I saw, I didn’t relate to 90% of them. I felt they were inauthentic. I think there’s a power in witnessing somebody be very real, who you can somehow relate to. It demonstrates something that reminds people that we’re not alone.

I try to be pretty disarming when I meet these guys and go into their space and disappear into the wallpaper. I never ask people to do things that they would normally do in their bedroom. And bedrooms have an intimate quality. I’m not interested in shooting stuff that’s just sexy for sexy’s sake or finding hot bodies with nothing else going on. But paradoxically, because I’m so on the hunt for these intimate moments, I think brushing up against something that feels honest and intimate can be erotic for anybody.”

In Their Room is released by Peccadillo Pictures and is out now on DVD