And the winner is...

We've got a steady caffeine drip going now and looks like we'll actually recover from a few casualties sustained during the CineKink Awards and Afterglow celebration bash on Sunday night. Our neck is still feeling a wee bit twingy from too much time in the pillow pit - you know who you are! - been there, done that, just needs a bit more heat and ice. Most devastating, of course, was our Hilary Swank moment, when our heartfelt thank-yous for a wonderful festival somehow neglected to include our quite-frequently-better half, the one person who gets to suffer through the glamour of months upon months of DVDs stacked randomly about the house, round-the-clock email monitoring and the ubiquitous 2:00 am panic attack. ("Chad! Noooo..... don't forget to thank Chad!") Remembering how well that all turned out, we're relieved we were able to avert disaster with some on-the-spot tap dancing and delighted we have this forum to publicly declare our undying gratitudes. So, thank you again, baby, we I love you. Forever and ever, like.

And with that, let's move right along to the awards we announced at the conclusion of this year's quality-packed CineKink NYC...

AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS - "CineKink Choice"
CineKink Choice awards, which go to feature-length works in competition during the festival, were determined by audience balloting at the close of each eligible work's screening. The 2006 award winners are:

CineKink Choice Award for Best Documentary Feature:
"Vice & Consent" (Howard Scott Warshaw, 2006, USA, 56 minutes) The candor, wit and wisdom of such prominent, long-standing members of the BDSM community as Midori, Jay Wiseman, Janet Hardy, Race Bannon, Cleo Dubois and Michael Blue, help shatter some popular myths about BDSM practice and its practitioners, looking instead at the gifts of intimacy that lie within.

CineKink Choice Award for Best Narrative Feature:
"O - The Power of Submission" (Ernest Greene, 2006, USA, 160 minutes) The 1954 S/M literary classic, "The Story of O," is updated to contemporary Los Angeles and given the hardcore treatment in this loving adaptation. Here, O is a tough and self-determined fetish photographer who is delivered by her boyfriend, Ray, to his brother Stephen's ultra posh mansion in the hills. (Featuring Carmen Luvana, Kiley Ireland, Shayla Laveaux, Justine Joli, Adrianna Nicole, Evan Stone and Tommy Gun, with a special guest appearance by Nina Hartley.)

CineKink Choice Award - Honorable Mention:
"Webcam Girls" (Aerlyn Weissman, 2004, Canada, 52 minutes) A funny and engaging visit with four outspoken pioneers of the girlcam frontier. Ducky Doolittle seduces her cyber-fans with a heady mix of fun and sexuality. Ana Voog uses her cam as a 24/7 performance art vehicle. Dionne Lowen quit her job selling cars to open an ethical adult site. And Teresa Senft, adding her notions of biography, privacy and micro-celebrity, declares in the future "everyone will be famous to 15 people."

JURY AWARD FOR BEST SHORTS - "CineKink Best"
CineKink Best awards, which go to short works in competition during the festival, were determined by jury deliberation and ranking. The 2006 award winners are:

CineKink Best Narrative Short (tie):
"guy101" (Ian Gouldstone, 2005, UK, 8 minutes) A man hears a story about a hitchhiker from the other side of the Internet.
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"Hitchcocked" (David Young, 2006, USA, 8 minutes) A hot, casual encounter stirs up some surprising truths about love, life, online-dating...and danger.

CineKink Best Experimental Short:
"Filthy Food" (T. Arthur Cottam, 2006, USA, 5 minutes) Eat it. Lick it. Suck it. Swallow it. Relax, it's just food. (Another dirty little short from the director of Pornographic Apathetic, a previous CineKink best!)

CineKink Best Documentary Short:
"Want" (Loree Erickson, 2006, Canada, 9 minutes) Explicit images merge with everyday moments for a different - and sexy - view of disability.

CineKink Honorable Bests:
"Do You Take It?" (Kirby Ferguson, 2006 Canada, 3 minutes) The kinky cabaret duo, The Wet Spots, asks a crucial, musical question.
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"Honey and Bunny" (Eva Midgley, 2004, UK, 10 minutes) One lovely afternoon, in a place not far away, Honey and Bunny embark on an exciting adventure.
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"Hot and Bothered: Feminist Pornography" (Becky Goldberg, 2003, USA, 37 minutes). A look at some of the women committed to making and supporting pornography that includes their feminist values, including Greta Christina, Nina Hartley, Sharon Mitchell and Tristan Taormino.

This year's CineKink jurors included:
Filmmaker Francesca Rizzo, winner of a CineKink Best Award last year for her short "Sullivan's Last Call;" Thor Stockman, creator and presenter of the popular film clip program "S/M at the Movies: The Good, The Bad and The Ridiculous;" and Bill Woods, a film festival programmer and curator of the New Filmmakers series at Anthology Film Archives.

FESTIVAL AWARD FOR EXTRAORDINARY MAINSTREAM DEPICTION OF KINK - "CineKink Tribute"
Recognizing extraordinary depiction of kink in mainstream film and television, the annual CineKink Tribute was presented to the film "Notorious Bettie Page," for its tender portrait of the infamous pin-up icon, Bettie Page, and the people who both created and consumed the fetish imagery for which she's best known.

Released by Picturehouse in 2006, "Notorious Bettie Page" was directed by Mary Harron from a screenplay she wrote with Guinevere Turner, and stars Gretchen Mol, Chris Bauer, Lili Taylor and David Strathairn. Producers for the film were Pamela Koffler, Katie Roumel and Christine Vachon, along with executive producer John Wells.

Honorable mentions for the CineKink Tribute went to the television series "What About Brian?" (ABC) and "The Montel Williams Show" (CBS Paramount Domestic Television), and to the documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" (IFC).

Our kudos and congratulations to the CineKink NYC 2006 award winners and our many, many thanks to all of the filmmakers who took part in our annual celebration of kink on the big screen!

Hey! They're talking about us!!

Even in the midst of all the bleary-eyed excitement and sleep deprivation, we still somehow find the time to check our statcounter obsessively and look to see that our name's spelled right. So far, so good - with a special thanks to The Reeler for sending Roman Polanski-fetishist Lauren Wissot into our midst for such a wonderfully comprehensive piece of coverage.

Here's the entirety of the honor roll. Please, keep it coming!

10/18 Waking Vixen:
CineKink kicks off, and everything is a blur

10/18 Fleshbot:
CineKink Kickoff Party

10/18 ScreenGrab @ Nerve:
Crawl On the Red Carpet, CineKink Kicks Off

10/17 Filmmaker Magazine:
Kinked Out
(Our favorite new blurb: There's a film festival this weekend taking place at a decadent playground where the idle rich enact scenes of ritual perversion. And for those who won't be heading out to the Hamptons Film Festival, there's Cinekink...

10/17 Green Cine Daily:
Fests & Events

10/17 The Reeler:
Making Whoopee: The Art of CineKink

10/12 Waking Vixen:
The State of Smut: NYC

10/6 Chris Gore:
Film Festival Road Trips Worth the Gas

10/3 Eros Zine:
New York Featured Event

9/29 The Reeler:
Opening Night News

9/19 Cinematical:
SXSW Announces Super Size Guests

Investigating "The State of Smut: NYC"

We're losing sleep these days in our breathless anticipation of "The State of Smut: NYC," a special CineKink panel taking place on Saturday, October 21 at 4:30 pm.

No longer the hub of porn production it was in the 1970s, New York City has become a haven for filmmakers who are forging new paths in adult entertainment. A panel of NYC-based directors will discuss what it is like working in this sector of the film business, also considering whether the city itself inspires a unique approach to the subject matter and whether the movies made locally are all that different from those produced in "Porn Valley."

Moderating the panel will be Audacia Ray, an executive editor at $pread magazine and Fleshbot contributor, who recently directed her first adult feature, "The Bi Apple."

Our illustrious panelists include:

Tony Comstock of Comstock Films, specializing in explicit documentaries of real-life lovers (including the recently banned-in-Australia "Damon & Hunter: Doing it Together," which will have its US Premiere later that evening in the CineKink NYC schedule, October 21, 8:30 pm);

Tony Dimarco, art director for Lucas Entertainment, which produces glossy films for the gay adult market, and art director/director of photography of their most recent feature, "La Dolce Vita;"

Joe Gallant of Black Mirror Productions, whose gritty, East Village-based productions are touted as "sleazy NYC sex;" and

Candida Royalle, whose pioneering Femme Productions was founded in 1980 to make erotica intended primarily for women.

Questions from the audience will be encouraged and - need you ask? - film clips will be included!

The poster that dare not speak its name.

Fresh from its ban at the hands of the Australian government, the "intimate" documentary Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together, will be enjoying its US Premiere at CineKink NYC, screening as part of our program "Passion Plays" on Saturday, October 21st @ 8:30 pm.



If you'd like to tide yourself over until you can gaze on at its glorious co-stars all-a-splendor up on the big screen, you might try stalking director Tony Comstock as he snipes his way through relevant NYC neighborhoods and see if you can make off with one of his glossy new posters.

In the other meantime, tune into YNOTRadio.com as Darklady interview's CineKink's Lisa Vandever, along with Tony, about the triumphs and trials of championing sex-positive cinema in America. (Darklady's Sexpose; 10/12 @ 5pm edt) We're sure it shall be quite elucidating!