German actor and filmmaker Frank Ripploh was BOTD in 1949. Born in Rheine in the newly-formed Republic of West Germany, he grew up in a conservative Christian family. He studied literature at the University of Heidelberg, and appeared in short films by queer filmmakers Rosa von Praunheim and Ulrike Ottinger. After graduating, he moved to West Berlin in 1972 and worked as a schoolteacher. He rose to national prominence in 1978 when he and 680 other men publicly came out as gay in a report published in the current affairs magazine Der Stern. Ripploh was quoted as saying “I’m sick of this constant game of hide-and-seek. We gays must finally educate the ‘normal’ people about us. We no longer want to be unwelcome outsiders. We must tell those who don’t want to hear it to their faces that we are homosexual.” The disclosure of his sexuality led to his censure by Berlin state authorities for “inappropriately exposing his sexual behaviour to the public” and he was denied civil servant status. He is best known for his 1980 debut feature Taxi zum Klo (Taxi to the Toilet), a semi-autobiographical narrative about a promiscuously gay German schoolteacher. Rejected for state funding due to its sexually explicit subject matter, Ripploh wrote, produced and directed the film himself on a shoestring budget, as well as playing the lead role of Frank, a man torn between his love of promiscuity, drag, public sex and the S&M leather scene and his romance with a theatre manager. Arriving on the tail end of the New German Cinema movement, Taxi zum Klo surpassed the queer-themed films of Reiner Werner Fassbinder with generous full frontal male nudity and graphic depictions of gay sex. Despite a limited theatrical release and predictable outrage from conservatives, the film was acclaimed for its frank and unapologetic portrayal of gay life and won the Max Ophüls Film Festival Prize. Ripploh published a book about his experiences making the film, appropriately titled Ich dreh’ gerade einen Film, in dem ich nackt bin (I’m Currently Shooting a Film, in Which I’m Naked), in 1981. Ripploh had a brief role in Fassbinder’s final film Querelle, based on Jean Genet‘s novel, and they appeared together in the science fiction film Kamikazi. Ripploh’s next feature film Miko: Aus der Gosse zu den Sternen (Miko: From the Gutter to the Stars), chronicled a rock singer struggling to revive her career, with Ripploh playing her bisexual friend and manager. His final film Taxi nach Kairo (Taxi to Cairo), intended as a sequel to Taxi zum Klo, was less successful, and not released outside Germany. In later years, he worked as a freelance journalist and film reviewer for Der Stern and Die Woche, distributed wrestling films, and produced the hardocre porn film Strippen und ficken (Strip & Fuck). He died of cancer in 2002, aged 52.