'S&M Judge' to open CineKink NYC

The CineKink “Season Opener” selection for our seventh annual film festival, CineKink NYC, running February 16-21, 2010, will be the US premiere of the award-winning drama, S&M Judge.

Directed by Flemish filmmaker Erik Lamens and based on a celebrated Belgian incident, the film tells of a respected judge who, desperate to save his marriage, reluctantly gives in to fulfilling the masochistic desires his wife has been hiding from him for decades. Initially shocked at her revelation, his love helps him overcome his inhibitions, and they begin to enjoy a secret life in the city's underground S/M scene.

But when the two are caught up in a police sting, his arrest and trial cause a national scandal. While their activities have been purely consensual, the court views his participation as criminal, putting his job, reputation and family life in jeopardy.

“S&M Judge is a beautiful and moving account of the conflict many face in balancing their sexual desires with societal views of what is ‘normal’—and with outmoded legal restrictions that are still on the books in many communities,” said Lisa Vandever, co-founder and director of CineKink. “We’re very proud to give the film its US premiere and present it to our audiences.”

S&M Judge will screen on Wednesday, February 17, 6:45 pm at Anthology Film Archives, where the majority of the festival screenings are also unfolding.

CineKink NYC kicks off the previous evening, Tuesday, February 16, with a gala fundraising party, and runs through Sunday, February 21, concluding with an awards ceremony and an AfterGlow closing party.

More info on all that--and advance tickets--coming soon!

Update: Tickets are available here! A donation of 25% from all advance ticket sales will go to support NCSF.

Hey...you got socially redeeming importance in my prurient interest!

(image via SIU School of Law)

Given the promises made within the bold red circle on the cover, you can imagine our delight when we stumbled upon our parents' copy of the unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover, tucked way, way up high on the top shelf of their bookcase. And, if you happened to read the same tome as an eager youth, you can also appreciate our growing disappointment as we realized the book was a bit more, well, literary than some other titles found in their 1970s-era library.

All of that was possible thanks to a court decision made 50 years ago today--resulting from the efforts of Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset, who sued the US Postal Service for confiscating copies of the uncensored version of the novel, which had long been banned for its explicit descriptions of sex and liberal use of the f-word. As recounted in the New York Times, an attorney hired by Rosset, Charles Rembar, spotted a loophole in an earlier Supreme Court ruling and argued that while a work might be found obscene, it could at the same time present ideas of "redeeming social importance" - and qualify for First Amendment protections afterall.

Though obscenity battles continue on today, a ruling on July 21, 1959 in favor of Grove Press took away the Post Office's absolute authority to impound and restrict such works. And paved the way for Lady Chatterley's Lover to find its way to bookshelves throughout America, to be joined later by such subsequent Grove Press gems as the first US edition of The Story of O and "My Secret Life," the purported erotic memoir of a Victorian gentleman, along with many less prurient offerings over the years.

Barney Rosset's heroic skirmishes against censorship and the ups and downs of Grove Press are detailed in the recent documentary Obscene:

More "do me," less DOMA!

While it's common belief that each letter received from a constituent represents at least 100 others who held that particular opinion, we're unsure of the equivalency of a mailed flip flop. What is clear, however, is that in the month ahead, President Obama has the opportunity to stand aside and let a lawsuit against the Defense of Marriage Act move forward unchallenged.

A law the President himself has described as "abhorrent," DOMA, which prohibits the Federal recognition of same-sex unions, has been taken on in a lawsuit filed by several Massachusetts couples. And the folks at Operation DOMA Flip Flop want to make sure that President Obama stays true to his principles and refuses to defend the unconstitutional statute:



The decision must come down by June 29th, so whether you choose to send a flip flop--or perhaps a respectful-yet-compelling missive neatly written on a sheet of fine stationery--you have only a limited time to weigh in with your opinion.

So gay!

Or, to be more politic, so same-sex!

We're slightly chagrined to admit, but our first thought upon learning that the California State Supreme Court had struck down laws limiting same-sex marriage was of the wedding invitations that would soon be winging their way to our mailbox. We do love a good party!

And ever since we endured the sweet tortures of planning our own wedding a few years back, one of our secret indulgences continues to be wedding porn, with a sordid, lingering taste for the occasional Whose Wedding is it Anyway? marathon.

So, while we're of course enraptured by the right-minded arguments of equality and fairness that surrounds this crucial advance, and there are many videos that might bring us to the edge of sincere choked-upped-ness, given that afterall, this is all really about the basic and simple ability to be publicly and legally joined with the a person you love, we'd also like to say, with this clip from the gay wedding episode of Party, Party - welcome to the freak show!

The revolution will not be televised, but can be seen on various cable outlets.

A sprawling, four-part documentary, Sex: The Revolution, takes on just that when it airs on VH1 this week.

We missed the first episode ourselves, but as with all things VH1, repeats are a-plenty and there's still time to set your dvr! Or, if you're feeling a little more highbrow, catch the encores when they're broadcast on the Sundance Channel next week.

Starting with the sexual repression of the 1950s and moving into the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, the series promises to "... explore a time in American history that challenged centuries of traditional morality about sex. A time that eradicated people's fear, loathing and ignorance about sex. A time that promoted unprecedented sexual honesty and expression. And in the end, a time when laws were changed and rulings made to end censorship and legal retribution for people's private sexual behavior."

How much of a back-sliding we've experienced since then we'll try not to contemplate. And turn our attention instead to this clip from the series about Barbarella and the sexual trends that the movie exemplified:


video.vh1.com

Um. Pornography is in focus?

A twist on an old joke has cropped up around CineKink, surfacing more frequently around festival submission time:

"What's the difference between art and pornography?"

"Pornography arrives with its 2257 compliance properly identified."

Bah dump bump.

Anyway...an expansion on some of the topics we discussed during our recent SXSW panel, The Porn Police: Know the Rules, an article by attorney Alan Levy has just been published in The Yale Law Journal.

First tracing the history of federal 2257 record-keeping regulations and its recent judicial back-and-forths, the article then goes into the implications that they present to all filmmakers, including those working with actual and with simulated depictions of sexual conduct.

Mainstream filmmakers should be especially concerned with the language of the most recent published § 2257 regulations, in which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote, “Section 2257A requires that producers of visual depictions of simulated sexually explicit conduct maintain records documenting that performers in those depictions not be minors.” Does this mean that a noted film such as Taxi Driver, in which a twelve-year-old Jodi Foster portrays a thirteen-year-old prostitute, is unlawful? What about the more recent controversial film Hounddog, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and portrayed twelve-year-old Dakota Fanning as a rape victim? Even a film nominated for Best Picture at the 2008 Academy Awards may be affected by § 2257A. Atonement has one scene of explicit simulated sexual conduct involving actress Juno Temple, who was seventeen years of age at the time of filming.

While filmmakers working in the adult arena are, for the most part, all too aware of the regulations, their existence seems to escape notice of documentarians who occasionally stumble into the realm of actual sexual conduct. (And again, we ask, what the hell does that mean?) And with the expansions presented by 2257A, a huge new class of fiction filmmakers is folded into the mix.

For all, it is critical to know both the rules and the risks - and to work together in protesting their chilling presence.

To read more of Alan's article: How “Swingers” Might Save Hollywood from a Federal Pornography Statute

A fight to the finish

The fifteenth and final New York Underground Film Festival kicked off last night and continues through April 8th at Anthology Film Archives.

In a comprehensive profile on indieWire about the changing landscape of underground festivals in the US, organizers point to new distribution technologies that make many of the works they showcase more readily accessible - a consideration also looming for kinky film festivals, no doubt. But they also question the nebulous definition of the genre itself:

"What is 'underground' film anyway?" wondered Ed Halter, the former director of NYUFF and one of this year's special curators. "The term 'underground' is problematic because most people are under the misconception that 'underground, is synonymous with 'shock' cinema."

In the comments to the article, filmmaker Ralph Ackerman puts the query in to some historical perspective:

I started making experimental films in 1963 and at that time we called it underground cinema because if we showed our films in the public we were always arrested for being obscene etc... Things are so mild now. Kenneth Anger with his trangressive films faced the coops (sic) often."

With that, our best wishes to NYUFF organizers in their new venture, Migrating Forms - and just one of the NYUFF '08 trailers, a retro-flavored, hair-pulling rendition commissioned from Peggy Ahwesh.

Yay, um... Fox?

Fox Television is standing firm (sorry) in the face of a $91,000 fine thrust (yep!) upon it by the Federal Communications Commission for a single episode of its reality series, Married by America.

Despite Fox's argument that the material in question was not statutorily indecent, an FCC analyst maintained:
Even with Fox's editing, the episode includes scenes in which partygoers lick whipped cream from strippers' bodies in a sexually suggestive manner. Another scene features a man on all fours in his underwear as two female strippers playfully spank him. Although the episode electronically obscures any nudity, the sexual nature of the scenes is inescapable, as the strippers attempt to lure partygoers into sexually compromising situations.
(taken from Variety via Defamer)

While that might sound like the plot-line of your typical mid-season replacement sitcom - "the guys run amuck!" - the amount of the fine was originally $1.2 million, levied to include all 169 stations, at $7,000 each, airing the 2003 episode. That amount has since been reduced by the FCC so that only the 13 stations that ostensibly received complaints would be fined, but even that degree of outcry is suspect. Through just a bit of sleuthing, journalist Jeff Jarvis uncovered that the number of complaints was not 159, but merely 23. And of those, all but two were identical form letters, boiling down to three original complaints out of millions viewing.

Instead of paying the reduced amount, Fox will file a request that the FCC completely reconsider the fine. In another case currently pending Supreme Court review, Fox also successfully sued the agency over a new restriction on "fleeting" expletives.

The world watches. (Or pretends otherwise, but secretly Tivos.)

Delayed gratification: Sex & SxSWing!

Going from CineKink to SXSW to Dark Odyssey has been a bit of a gauntlet - a gauntlet of pleasure, to be sure, but now that we're at the end of it, our body, sensing a respite, seems to be flirting heavily with what is generally known as the common cold. But, dammit, not before we get out this too-long-delayed SXSW recap, even through a Nyquil haze...

You can take a listen to the podcast here, but our panel, The Porn Police: Know The Rules, went off well and we managed to cram a ridiculous amount of somewhat tedious 2257 detail into our alloted hour. In addition toyours truly, the speakers included Violet Blue, deftly illustrating how the regulations play out in the real world and the problems they present for artists on both sides of the camera, attorney Alan Levy, keeping us on track with which part of the law stipulates what - and what that might actually mean in the day-to-day - and director Joe Swanberg seeming to grow increasingly consternated with the realization of how the rules could well apply to his own, er, body of work. (Lascivious display of nudity, anyone?!)

Bottom line - for all media makers working with depictions of sexual conduct, both actual and simulated (what's that?), it represents another area of calculated risk - one that will warrant further discussion in the months ahead. While the danger is probably slim for most, it's still critical to know the rules rather than blithely plowing ahead and hoping for the best.

And in other sex matters at SXSW:

Violet Blue also tackled and spurred further online discussion of a tricky subject with her lively panel, Sexual Privacy Online.

Cory Silverberg facilitated a discussion on Sexual Ethics, Interactivity and Virtual Worlds

Twanna a. Hines took on Adult Conversations: Sex, Intimacy & Online Relationships.

Elizabeth Wood and Lux Alptraum led the core conversation Pink Ghetto Blasters: Destigmatizing Sex, then Lux gave us a 20x2 rumination on the differences between porn and erotica:



Film offerings we managed to catch included Bi The Way, a look at the sexual inclinations of the so-called "whatever generation," Obscene, a documentary profile of the colorful Grove Press publisher, Barney Rosset, and the superb Sex Positive, exploring the life of activist Richard Berkowitz and his critical role in the now taken-for-granted concept of safe sex.

And, not quite sex, but about as close as you can get armed only with a Handywipe, we enjoyed reprised BBQ revelations at Iron Works and - well worth the trek out to Driftwood - Salt Lick!

Once again, we'd like to thank SXSW for their sex-positive inclusivity - along with Matt Dentler, Hugh Forrest and their respective crews for making it all happen.

The Porn Police @ SXSW !

As part of SXSW, CineKink’s co-founder and director, Lisa Vandever, will moderate a panel about the various regulations on sexually explicit content and how they may apply to all types of media producers.

THE PORN POLICE: KNOW THE RULES
Saturday, March 8 - 5-6 pm

It may seem like sex is everywhere in film, television and online, but sexual portrayals are surprisingly restricted - and getting more so everyday. Already draconian federal regulations on the depiction of sexually explicit conduct were recently expanded and signed into law by President Bush, and now apply to an even wider class of media makers. Not just pornographers, but anyone creating and working with explicit imagery of even simulated sexual conduct - bloggers, webmasters, narrative filmmakers, documentarians - needs to know the rules and the risks.
This session will touch upon:
* Overview of 18 U.S.C. 2257 & 2257A record-keeping requirements for actual and simulated sexually explicit material
* New wrinkles introduced by online access/distribution of materials
* Resources for additional information and advocacy support

Panelists:
Violet Blue
Tony Comstock
Alan Levy, Esq.
Joe Swanberg

If you're around, come on by!