On the Red Carpet... Balloons

During the CineKink NYC/2010 festivities, director Charles Nukolls takes a few moments to discuss his film, Balloons, with Ivy Liegh.

Winner of the jury-selected Best Short Documentary award at CineKink, the piece looks at a unique use for what you might not think of as a sex toy.

On the Red Carpet... Coverage

Director Jef Taylor discusses his short film, Coverage, during the CineKink NYC/2010 festivities.



In the film, which won a CineKink Honorable Best Mention Award, the events and subsequent media coverage of September 11th, 2001 create a sexual obsession that threatens to destroy a relationship,

Yes, again, please - we will take another!

Even though it was first released in 1997, Preaching to the Perverted was an obvious choice to open the first-ever CineKink NYC back in 2003, where it took home one of our first-ever Audience Choice Awards.

From British director Stuart Urban, the movie follows a fresh-faced infiltrator who is dispatched by moral crusaders in Parliament to gather evidence against fetish clubs in the United Kingdom, where many of the saucier activities are illegal. Thrust into a shiny latex world of clubs and parties, he instead - of course! - becomes infatuated with Tanya Cheex, leader of the fetish scene on both sides of the Atlantic. While he wants her to calm down, become "normal" and avoid going to jail, she wants to pervert him. Who will win? We can only say "hmmm..."

While it's one of the few wholeheartedly S/M-positive films created to date and a favorite recommendation, until now only a trimmed-up R-rated version has been available on DVD in the US.



But brilliant news! Featuring interview extras by film critic Alonso Duralde with the beyond-sexy star of the movie, Guinevere Turner, there's a new version out that is touted as unrated and looks to have a likely-key three minutes returned to its running time.

Starting today, freshly available on DVD... Preaching To The Perverted: Guinevere Turner Signature Edition!

It's 10 pm. Do you know where your children are?

Amazing but true, but give the Midwest Teen Sex Show a few key concepts, some colorful props and several feet of rope and they manage to convey in the space of several minutes what it takes many a fetish-friendly documentarian - self included - a good half hour to express.

Herewith MTSS Episode #18 (Fetishes)



(Though we know they're kidding, our internal safety nazi wishes they'd spent a wee bit of that time literally underscoring the unwisdom of leaving anyone in bondage unattended. Probably the kids just get it?)

Holy seemingly gratuitous YouTube post, Batman!

We're still feeling a little jet-laggy and discombulated from our trip west and subsequent weather flip-flops. But our recent time back at home sorting through the family archives (aka clutter in the basement) triggered the recollection that one of our very first television idols was Batman. And for a time, we even had his picture tacked to the wall above our bed.

What this might mean in terms of early fetish imprints, we can only begin to speculate - see also The Sound of Music - but the thought did provide impetus to spend a good chunk of a rainy Monday morning procrastinating amongst the nostalgic offerings on YouTube.

Herewith, our early girl-crush, Batgirl, in her introduction to the series - along with the bemused wondering why our childhood Halloween rendition of her didn't somehow incorporate purple latex.

That, in itself, might explain a few things!

Of Ilsa and her ilk

A new documentary, Stalags, examines the pornographic paperbacks, featuring colorful depictions of buxom SS officers bending captives to their will, that cropped up in Israel around the time of the Holocaust trials in the early 1960s.

Claims by Max Mosley to the contrary notwithstanding - and as a subsequent slew of sexploitative titles will attest - Nazi iconography can pack a huge libidinous wollop. In a comprehensive review of the film, Lauren Wissot discusses the film's powerful dissecting of the phenomenon:

Simply put, this film is a revelation. Like the best investigative journalists, Libsker patiently sifts through each and every contradiction to discover that something that would seem so horrifically paradoxical on its face proves ultimately inevitable beneath the surface. How could Israeli Nazi pornography even exist, let alone be a widespread phenomenon? Stalags answers, “How could it not?”

Stalags open tonight at NYC's Film Forum and runs through 4/22.

The Cabinet of Maria Beatty

Just a little taste of the delights in store for those of you joining us tonight!

An evening of elegant kink

Join us tomorrow for a New Year's double-header of works from Maria Beatty, each offering up the director's signature "erotic noir" style and depictions of a ride between pain and pleasure at the hands of a beautiful temptress. And then around the corner for a cocktail or two.

The Elegant Spanking







The Seven Deadly Sins








"Beatty makes porno into fetishistic film noir; imagine a kinky Louise Brooks, a sadistic Marlene Dietrich (who's the top?), and some nipple clamps and hot wax, and you're beginning to get the idea."
- Tristan Taormino, The Village Voice

Screening:
Tuesday, January 8 @ 7 pm
Two Boots Pioneer Theater
155 E. Third Street (@ Avenue A), NYC
212.591.0434

Cocktails:
China 1
50 Avenue B (@ 4th Street), NYC

More info and tickets are here!

Tonight...

CineKink @ Pioneer/Tuesday, October 9th @ 7 pm

Liberty in Restraint










"A fascinating programme that provides much insight into the nature of BDSM and the communities involved. Its style is frank and revelatory but also refreshingly non-judgemental."
Tony Mitchell - Skin Two #52

More info, tickets and a preview trailer are here!

CineKink-at-a-Glance

We've had so much going on in our New York calendar lately, it's been hard for everyone (especially us!) to keep on top of where we are when. And October's looking especially hectic...

Friday, October 5th - 9 pm
CineKink's "Bite the Apple!" @ New York Leather Weekend

Saturday, October 6th - noon
CineKink scopes the scene at NYC's Poly Pride Day Picnic
(and, energy permitting, Poly Pride dance that evening)

Sunday, October 7th - 2 pm
CineKink @ New York Leather Weekend's Street Fair

Tuesday, October 9th - 7 pm
CineKink @ Pioneer - LIBERTY IN RESTRAINT

Thursday, October 11th - 8 pm
NEW! Save the date for a special CineKink appearance by The Wet Spots!
More info coming soon...

Tuesday...

Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - 7 pm

The Pioneer Theater and CineKink team up to present another evening of kinky movies, pizza and beer.



"Born in a Barn is a model documentary on the subject, a respectful study that pays homage to the subculture without sugarcoating or sensationalizing it."
- Gary Morris, Bright Lights Film Journal

"Anyone who harbors a private kink should see this film."
- Abby Ehmann, Eros Zine

BORN IN A BARN
(Audience Choice Award - Best Documentary/CineKink 2004)
An intimate and sometimes humorous look into the extraordinary erotic lives of four seemingly ordinary people. Delving deep into the world of ponyplay, the fast-growing fetish in which enthusiasts roleplay as human ponies and handlers, this documentary explores the complex motives that drive this particular passion and reveals how identity can be found in the pursuit of unconventional desire. (Directed by Elizabeth Elson, 2004, USA, 50 minutes.)

Plays with SHINE: CONFESSIONS OF A RUBBER FETISHIST, a funny, thought-provoking and unapologetic visit with Shine, who goes to work everyday, plays chess, likes to dress in rubber and craves being whipped by his friends. (Directed by Karine Baczynski, 2003, USA, 28 minutes; Best Documentary Short/CineKink 2003.)

Free pizza and beer reception follows for all ticket holders!

More info and tickets!

Catching up with the furries.

We're not sure what it is, but lately we've been feeling several steps behind in catching up with just about everything. Hopefully we're getting a handle on that. One day... taxes nailed! The next... we're clawing through the episodes that have been stockpiling for our eventual viewing pleasure osmosis.

So, with many thanks to the wonders of digital video, we recently caught up with Entourage's "The Day F*ckers," in which assumed comic relief side-kicks, Turtle and Drama, encounter still more wacky, sexual hijinks in the wilds of Hollywood. This time, barely recovered from their humilating ordeal of sex with old chicks, Turtle comes across a hot blonde who has very specific notions of what she wants from him.



It's put a bit less delicately in the actual dialogue, but sex still being sex for one of them, no matter the trappings, herein is the storyline's, er, denouement:

Four nights of great sex?!

If that's the case, looks like we actually have a bit of catching up to do. Somehow in our July torpor we missed the announcement that the documentary series, Indie Sex, began airing this week on IFC.

Fortunately, it's cable, so last night's missed episode will be back around shortly (and again and again). But we'll be watching closely to see if any of the footage the crew shot at last year's CineKink kick-off gala with the fabulous Wet Spots made it past network censors and into the final production.

And, if we're not lying somewhere on the cutting-room floor, would we be more likely considered the "Taboos" type - episode #2, airing tonight! - or a bit more an "Extremes" sort of girl?

Tune in and find out...

Men in suits alert!

How lucky are we to have a secret fetish that's actually not not safe for work? (Though, come to think of it, such fetish can sometimes make the actual practice of work a little dangerous.)

Tonight's the premiere of Mad Men on AMC. In addition to the previously noted men in suits - as this trailer promises, "...reliable... confident ... and hiding something" - the distance of its early 60s setting will also permit lots of glamourous smoking, drinking and carousing, along with the type of hot, retro lingerie that looks so much better than it generally feels.

As to the retro (or, er, not) rampant bad boy sexism depicted? Let's just try that on as a little winking roleplay and, safeword on the ready - we'll give it a go!

Sad news from Australia

From director Michael Ney comes word that photographer Noel Graydon died last week from heart failure.

Subject of the documentary, Liberty in Restraint, which played CineKink in both short (Best Documentary Short/CineKink 2004) and feature (CineKink 2005) versions, Noel had been a fixture of the Sydney fetish world for over a decade. For five years he trained and worked as a BDSM Master, aka "Master Venom," and established the friendships which led him to genuinely photograph and capture this sometimes clandestine world.

Noel began his career as an assistant to a commercial photographer and assistant video cameraman in several video production companies. During this time he pursued freelance photojournalism with several newspapers and street press. As a photojournalist, Noel covered a variety of fields including humanities, Gen X and sexual lifestyle issues. His work was published in many magazines in Australia, as well as in the UK's SkinTwo. He also spent time with Flesh magazine as their BDSM columnist and recently launched a series of podcasts documenting many aspects of the fetish world.

The funeral will be held Friday, July 13 in Brisbane, Australia, with his wife, Annette, and their two daughters, as well as his parents and sister.  Noel was 36.

Our very best thoughts to his family, friends and colleagues. Noel will surely be missed.