Sexuality

The Politics of Intimacy

The setting for The Politics of Intimacy recalls the widespread consciousness-raising (CR) groups in the late '60s and early '70s inspired by the emerging feminist movement. CR groups provided a forum to openly and collectively validate women's otherwise private experiences. In the tape Dr. Sherfy, one of the first doctors to write about female sexuality, and nine women of different ages, sexual preferences, and economic and social situations discuss their sexual experiences.

Undertone

In this now infamous tape, exemplary of his early transgressive performance style, Acconci sits and relates a masturbatory fantasy about a girl rubbing his legs under the table. Carrying on a rambling dialogue that shifts back and forth between the camera/spectator and himself, Acconci sexualizes the implicit contract between performer and viewer—the viewer serving as a voyeur who makes the performance possible by watching and completing the scene, believing the fantasy.

Underexposed: The Temple of the Fetus

This feature-length experimental narrative, about women’s relationships to new reproduction technologies and genetic engineering, combines documentary interviews with field experts and a science fiction segment depicting stories of in-vitro fertilization and other methods. Underexposed: The Temple Of The Fetus examines ways the news media shapes perceptions and social attitudes towards medical topics.

Uh Oh!

Uh Oh! is a love story that revolves around the classic text, The Story of O. Not an adaptation, but rather a critical analysis of masochism that investigates the relationship between love, risk-taking, spirituality, power, and sex. An all-female cast plays cowboys who stage sado-masochistic rituals in the basement of a diner. A waitress named Oh (Emanuela Villorini) falls in love with a cowboy (New York poet Eileen Myles).

Rosa Von Praunheim, Transexual Menace

Transsexual Menace takes its title from the name of "the most exciting political action group in the USA"—transgendered people who are defining themselves, demanding their legal rights, and fighting for medical care and against job discrimination. Considered by von Praunheim to be the “most fascinating [project] in my long life as a filmmaker,” Transsexual Menace is a sensitive and carefully crafted portrait that deals with issues openly and honestly. “I was able to earn the trust of many who are often reluctant to be interviewed.

Tom
Tom

A cinematic firestorm of found footage and pilfered Hollywood images, Mike Hoolboom’s hallucinatory Tom – described by the filmmaker as, "Cinema as déjà vu, or déjà voodoo" – pays mesmerizing experimental tribute to the life and work of friend and fellow avant-gardist Tom Chomont, and was selected by a national panel of film critics as one of Canada’s Top Ten of 2002.

Theme Song

In a vile and ingenious way, Acconci pleads with the camera/spectator to join with him, to come to him, promising to be honest and begging, "I need it, you need it, c'mon... look how easy it is." Acconci addresses the viewer as a sexual partner, acting as if no distance existed between them.In a vile and ingenious way, Acconci pleads with the camera/spectator to join with him, to come to him, promising to be honest and begging, "I need it, you need it, c'mon... look how easy it is." Acconci addresses the viewer as a sexual partner, acting as if no distance existed between them.

Take Off

"I made Take Off in my studio apartment on Myra Avenue during my second year living in Los Angeles. As a member of the Feminist Studio Workshop, I was writing an essay at the time comparing male artists’ representations of their sexuality with female artists’. Vito Acconci was my model for a male perspective. I had been captivated by his videotapes; particularly Undertone, where he was supposed to be masturbating while seated at a table. The videotape was my ultimate response and commentary on Acconci as well as an expression of my own sexuality."

—Susan Mogul

Sweet or Spicy

Ever listen to Loveline? Well, here's an episode with a 24-year-old Korean American guy who's never been kissed. They're offering free concert tickets to any girl who'll come in and take a chance. The girls get their tickets, and "David" gets to pick one of them for his first smack. Trouble is... no volunteers. Combining personal dating stories and the hypnotic imagery of multi-colored koi, Sweet Or Spicy? explores Hapa and Asian American male sexuality in popular culture.

The Stench of Satan

An All-American boy and girl are swept into an international intrigue of demonic content as items cursed with the stench of Satan make their way to a museum dedicated to the spiritual overthrow of family values. Loaded with romance, thrills, and exotic adventures, this electronic tele-play, with its colorful moments of scenic horror, leads the viewer on a fast-paced voyage that speeds through the ruins of Egypt, the jungles of equatorial erotica, and the puritanical Wonderland of Middle America.

Splash

A fable-like tale, Splash explores the interplay between identity, fantasy, and homosexual desire in pre-adolescence within the narrow confines of black masculinity. The tape is an exploration of the filmmaker’s psycho-social and sexual development within a society that encourages the consumption of whiteness and heterosexuality. Splash reveals how the family becomes the agency through which sexual repression and gender conformity are carried out.

Song of the Seven Senses

The Vagabond...what does he seek? - ask the River, ask the Wind - but don't ask Him!

Somethings Gonna Soon
EMR

EMR has created a sigil, a magic sex symbol abstracted from the words TRUST ME (NOT) TO HURT YOU that is spread across rituals of the beast. Discordant sound and psychic image imagine a cross formation, speak from the hole, say nothing. Untie the knot and let down the pony, somethings gonna soon.

-- EMR

This title is only available on CHANNELING: an invocation of spectral bodies and queer spirits.

 

Society Slut

The story of a matron and a midget in the heat of an unbridled passion. The colors run thick and heavy for paint and prurient pleasures as the electronic canvas unscrolls to reveal a bevy of beasties and beauties of nature and the unnatural. A non-stop melodrama of a patron of the arts shot by real art students in a real art school! A collaborative project I worked on with my class at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Small Lies, Big Truth

In turns funny, disturbing, and glisteningly sensual, small lies, Big Truth is a tape about love, relationships, and the joy and banality of sex in the late 20th century. It also touches on such issues as morality, voyeurism, nature vs. culture, and power, as eight people read fragments from the testimony of William Jefferson Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky, as published in the Starr Report.