Oct 212010
 

CineKink NYC–“the kinky film festival”–is seeking films and videos, of any length and genre, that explore and celebrate the wide diversity of sexuality. Dedicated to the recognition and encouragement of sex-positive and kink-friendly depictions in film and television, we’re looking to blur some boundaries and will be considering offerings drawn from both Hollywood and beyond, with works ranging from documentary to drama, camp comedy to hot porn, mildly spicy to quite explicit–and everything in between.

Cutting across orientations, topics covered at CineKink have included – but are by no means limited to – BDSM, leather and fetish, swinging, non-monogamy and polyamory, roleplay and gender bending, sex work and sex geekery. Basically, as long as it involves consenting adults, just about anything celebrating sex as a right of self expression is fair game.

Scheduled for its eight annual appearance March 1-6, 2011, the specially-curated CineKink NYC will also feature a short film competition, audience choice awards, a special adult entertainment showcase, presentations, parties and a gala kick-off, with a national screening tour to follow.

Discounted, early-bird entries have a post-marked deadline of November 5th, while the standard deadline is November 26th and the final deadline is December 10th.

For more information and to download an entry form, skip on over here!

Oct 162008
 

>Photobucket

You probably won’t get the inside scoop on what really goes down at the CineKink AfterGlow Party, but otherwise you’ll find all kinds of useful insider knowledge crammed into Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook for Independent Filmmakers.

Written by Christopher Holland, keeper of a blog of the same name and Manager of Festival Operations for B-Side Entertainment , the book is available for free online perusal. And/or, for those of us who prefer something tangible in our hot, little hands, may be purchased via Amazon.

And, lest we forget our own critical niche on the film festival circuit, a reminder that the CineKink call for entries is still underway. Submit now!

Aug 192008
 

>While we loooved The Draughtman’s Contract back in our full-on film school days, we’ve been loathe for a current revisit, fearing it might not hold up to our one-time adulation.

Karina Longworth recently took the film on, however, providing commentary for Kevin Lee’s video essay series on the alleged “1,000 Greatest Movies of All Time”. Her findings? Before placing the film in context of other 1982 cultural phenomena, Duran Duran included, she laughingly pronounces the movie’s message as nothing much more than “well, people who wore corsets liked to fuck.”

We’ll have to take another look!

May 092008
 

>A stand-out at the recent Tribeca Film Festival, we’ve got our eyes on The Auteur, the sweet and raucous story of Arturo Domingo, the one-time leading director of art-porn cinema (Five Easy Nieces, Requiem for a Wet Dream, Full Metal Jack-Off), who finds himself at an all-time low in both career and romance.

The movie is a perfect fit for CineKink and we’ll naturally be looking to include it in our next fest. But that’s still a ways off – approximately 291 days as of right now, but who’s counting? – and we’d love for it to find the audience it deserves in the meantime.

And you can help! Currently in the running for a slot in From Here to Awesome, a new festival that strives to cut through a lot of distribution mumbo-jumbo and make films more widely and directly available, you can take a gander at the submission trailer for The Auteur below and then make your desires known right here:

(It plays a much larger role in the actual movie, but watch for a few cameo appearances of the Clinton Street Theater, past and possibly future home to CineKink: PDX!)

May 022008
 

>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