How about a thumbs up?!

We recently submitted a couple of proposals on topics we'd like to present at the next SXSW festival--and we'd love your thumbs-up support on either or both if you're so inclined.

Both proposals have been included in the SXSW 2010 PanelPicker, the rather sadomasochistic tool that the event uses to help determine which topics will ultimately be included... your "yes" votes and comments can definitely make a difference!

#1 - The Porn Police Are STILL at the Door
Not just for pornographers, the notion for this panel grew out of our work curating CineKink, as we noticed that entries submitted by filmmakers from the adult sphere typically included notice that federal record-keeping requirements for sexually explicit material had been properly met, while those coming from the independent film world did not. (If you’re thinking “2257, huh?” that could probably be you!) Making matters worse, the regulations have recently been expanded to cover not just actual or documentary depictions of sex, but simulated situations—ie fiction—as well.

Yikes, you say? Pick this panel!

#2 - Was It Something I Said? TOS And Content
Meanwhile, this panel was inspired by the frustrations we've experienced over the years trying to position and promote a sex-related endeavor on the internet--from finding a web host and sending email blasts, to processing ticket sales and donations, to creating an identity in social marketing and getting our videos placed on popular sites. Seemingly the old adage--“I’ll know it when I see it”--flourishes online, where murky definitions of what content is and is not allowed abound. One gatekeeper’s “inappropriate” is another’s “adult” is another’s “offensive, obscene and/or pornographic.” How are we affected as users and creators--and is there any recourse?

Wanna find out? Pick this panel!

Bring it, America!

We originally noticed the art form in conjunction with the first annual Air Sex World Championship, held last fall in Austin, but haven't yet witnessed the act first-hand.

That will change this week--for much of America--as the competition takes to the road in search of this year's champion Air Sex performer. Kicking off tonight in Atlanta, the tour takes place over the next three weeks in cities across the nation.

Think you've got what it takes? Take a peek at last year's action for some guidelines and be prepared to serve it up!

Amuse bouche?

As we continue to tinker behind the scenes on CineKink NYC, coming up February 24th to March 1st, let us whet your appetite with this tasty morsel, a glimpse at The Auteur, a mélange of romantic comedy and raunchy satire that tells the story of renowned porn director Arturo Domingo, creative genius behind such classics as Five Easy Nieces and Requiem for a Wet Dream:



We've been admiring The Auteur from afar for quite awhile now and we're delighted to give this sweetly smutty film a stellar CineKink showcase slot--Saturday, February 28 @ 9 PM.

Hope you'll join us!

Rated X in Amsterdam!

For those of you fortunate enough to find yourself in Amsterdam this weekend--or with the wherewithal to grab a last-minute red-eye across the Atlantic--be sure to drop in for the cinematic antics at Rated X!

More tongue-twistingly known as the Amsterdam Alternative Erotica Film Festival and curated in part by our good friend and CineKink alum Jennifer Lyon Bell, the event promises "big-screen sexuality coming from a myriad of different angles and artistic perspectives." We'll be mixing it up--at least on that big screen--with CineKink's "Kinky Bits," a program featuring such favorites as Anonymity, Coming Out Spanko, Namaha Man, guy101, Hitchcocked, Who's The Top and Married with Children.

Also around for the festivities will be Maria Beatty and Tony Comstock, each of whom will be enjoying a retrospective moment in the spotlight, along with a veritable reunion of CineKink alumni. Past and--we certainly hope--future.

Hope towish we could see you there!

More grist for the mill.

With news that Basil Tsiokos, long-time artistic director of NewFest: The New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival, had recently stepped down from his post, we had more of that earth-shifting-beneath-us sense that the film festival world is truly changing.

But even as he underscores the pressing festival financial realities that are only worsening in today's economic climate, writing in an indieWIRE piece, FIRST PERSON | Basil Tsiokos: The Challenging State of Film Fests Today, he also offers some profound reminders of what draws many of us to this endeavor in the first place:

...the suggestion has grown that LGBT festivals have become increasingly irrelevant, especially in major metropolitan centers with large LGBT communities. What this ignores is that identity based niche fests serve a need beyond simply showcasing what used to be called "positive images." Certainly, there are more LGBT images readily available in 2008 than there were when NewFest was founded in 1988 - but even then, when audiences were starved for representation, NewFest served another, more critical function: providing a communal public social setting where LGBT individuals could celebrate or debate LGBT films together with other LGBT audience members.

Substitute "kink" or "sex-positive" for LGBT and you not only get to the core of CineKink but, moving beyond mission statements, you land upon the aspect that energizes and inspires us to keep it growing. It's an amazing thrill to bring CineKink's films and filmmakers together with our audiences, to feel the buzz of "like-mindedness" as they experience a work together--or to speak with a director right after she's had her work screened to a crowd that so apparently gets it.

We'll keep those moments in mind over the next several months of preparing for the next CineKink NYC, most especially while keeping an eye on the budget and taking on the anxious task of drumming up financial wherewithals.

And we'll wish Basil the very best of luck in his next adventures.

(via Film Festival Secrets)

Psssst!!!

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!

Comedy, pathos and lots of naked, dangly bits!

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!)

Too hot for Dallas!

The perennial crowd-pleaser and CineKink award winner, Filthy Food, has run into another flap of controversy, this time at the AFI Dallas International Film Festival.

According to director T. Arthur Cottam, the trailer for the film was prevented from being posted to the event's website for fear of offending AFI Dallas sponsors and the already printed cover for Day 3 of the festival's newspaper was ordered destroyed and replaced because it prominently featured an image (above!) from the film. (A bootleg copy of the original cover has been posted to the Dirty Little Shorts Yahoo Group.)

But an interview with T. - and a red carpet photo with a giant banana - did make its way into Day 11 of the AFI Dallas Daily News and touches upon controversies past and present. From the intro:

A nectarine, a banana, cookie dough – all banned. All forbidden to be shown onscreen at a film festival in Italy because they apparently would end civil society as we know it (or at least, as the Italians know it). That is the talent of T. Arthur Cottam and his film, FILTHY FOOD, in a nutshell. By the sheer weight of his presentation, he made some fruit and some dough naughty. More than naughty – disgusting, even.

Judge for yourself. You can watch the trailer, below. Or visit Atom Films to watch the smutty masterpiece in its glorious entirety!

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.

Are you ready?

More info - and much more - coming soon!