Sympathy for the Devil: The True Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment (USA, dir. Neil Edwards)
The Process, later known as The Process Church of the Final Judgment, was a fascinating entity that could only have arisen from 1960s culture. It’s been something of an enigma (and occasional bogeyman) for decades, but member Timothy Wyllie and Feral House’s Adam Parfrey co-edited a book on The Process entitled Love, Sex, Fear, Death published in 2009. This film is something of a documentary adaptation of the book, speaking to Wyllie and a number of other Process members as well as including interviews with others who had contact with the church or were fascinated by it. John Waters provides a number of highly entertaining appearances, and there are plenty of strange stories to go around, but more than anything the film underlines how life inside the Process was hardly as demonically glamorous as its reputation would suggest. For anyone who already has an interested in the history of the Process, this will likely be an entertaining watch. But for anyone not already familiar with the Church’s teachings, it may be a bit confusing since it barely touches on those at all, focusing instead on the impact the Process had on its members and the culture at large.
Chasing Banksy (USA, dir. Frank Henenlotter)
Entitled white guy Michael (Anthony Sneed), a struggling artist working at a record store and living rent-free in his buddy’s art studio, is sick of the nine to five and wants to focus on his art full-time. He discovers that UK street artist Banksy traveled to post-Katrina New Orleans and tagged some buildings in parts of the city hit hardest by the storm, and comes to the only logical conclusion: He should go steal it by cutting it off the abandoned building on which it was painted and sell it to make a million dollars. He enlists two other loathsome art bros, maxes out his credit cards, and heads to New Orleans. In case it’s not clear already, Chasing Banksy is mind-bogglingly wrongheaded. None of the lead characters are interesting in the least, a fact that is helpfully conveyed in the first scene of dialogue when they’re introduced talking about “pussy.” Unsurprisingly, there is exactly one named female character in the whole movie. It could probably be argued that the movie is poking fun at its clueless, privileged white protagonists, but it’s tough to imagine caring enough about these guys to make the effort. This is a huge disappointment from veteran genre filmmaker Frank Henenlotter, and if this and Bad Biology (in which Sneed also starred) are any indication he needs to find some new collaborators post-haste.
Curtain (USA, dir. Jaron Henrie-McCrea)
Following a period of depression during which she lived with her uncle, former nurse Danni (Danni Smith) moves into her own apartment. It’s suspiciously affordable, probably because its previous tenants all died under mysterious circumstances—the last one even did it in the bathroom. Soon Danni finds that whenever she hangs a shower curtain and closes the bathroom door, the curtain disappears. Baffled, she reluctantly enlists the help of coworker Tim (Tim Lueke) to figure out what’s happening. Curtain has a goofy setup and plenty of bizarre humor, but it’s more than just an absurd horror/comedy. Director Jaron Henrie-McCrea and co-writer Carys Edwards trust the viewer to piece together what is going on, basically giving them as much information as Danni has in a seriously strange situation. It’s a smart approach to such wild material, and it makes Curtain linger a lot longer in the mind than other similar independent horror films.
Blood of the Tribades (USA, dir. Sophia Cacciola & Michael J. Epstein)
It has been two thousand years since the vampire god Bathor left the world, and society is down to its last dregs. Grando (Seth Chatfield) leads a fanatical group of men, afflicted with blood poison, who hunt and kill the female vampires of the land in accordance with what they believe is Bathor’s will. A small clan of rogue women return from centuries of exile in an attempt to convince the persecuted to strike back, but is it already too late? Blood of the Tribades is a very low-budget tribute to 70s Euro-horror vampire movies, with garish colors reminiscent of that era’s Hammer productions and more than a little of Jean Rollin’s lesbian eroticism. It does have a distinctly modern sense of equality when it comes to skin, though: there are as many fully nude men here as there are women. Co-writer/directors Cacciola and Epstein cram a lot of mythology into a brief running time and they make good use of their limited resources—comparing this film to the others playing the festival, it really looks like this cost a tiny fraction of what any of those films did. The costumes look great, the acting is wildly overheated (as befits the material), and the soundtrack is excellent.
Note: Blood of the Tribades won the festival’s Audience Award for Best New England Film.
Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai (aka Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red in It, Niger, dir. Christopher Kirkley)
Speaking of excellent soundtracks: writer/director Christopher Kirkley may be best known for his work with the music label Sahel Sounds, which released a compilation titled Music from Saharan Cellphones in 2011. One of the artists on that compilation, Mdou Moctar, plays a fictionalized version of himself in this film, which is something of a remake of Purple Rain with a dash of The Harder They Come. Mdou arrives in the city of Agadez, where he wants to make a living as a musician. He meets some like-minded collaborators and begins a tentative romance with a young woman, but finds that the competition in Agadez is tougher than he could have guessed. The music throughout the film is fantastic, including a number of performances by Moctar and other real Nigerien musicians. None of them are career actors, but they have an easy charm in front of the camera. This is an engaging film from a part of the world rarely seen on the big screen, and an entertaining musical drama besides.
MAD (USA, dir. Robert G. Putka)
Recently divorced Mel (Maryann Plunkett) lands in the hospital following a “nervous breakdown.” While Mel spends time in the hospital psych ward, her daughters Connie (Jennifer Lafleur) and Casey (Ellis Cahill) try to figure out what to do. Connie, a successful businesswoman and mother, keeps up a strong façade but is dealing with some potentially serious legal problems from her work. Younger sister Casey is still trying to get her shit together, and in the meantime works from home doing sex cam shows. MAD is a brilliant dramatic showcase for its three leads that also happens to be wickedly funny. All three women are amazing in their roles, and their characters are sharply written by feature director Robert G. Putka. He and his cast clearly understand that those who we love the most are capable of cutting us down most effectively, and play that out in spectacular fashion. It’s hilarious but it’s also deeply poignant, and deals with aspects of life and characters that are rarely seen in American movies of any type. It’s almost unbelievable that this is Putka’s first feature; MAD isn’t just the best film to come out of this festival, it’s one of the best films of the year anywhere.
Note: MAD was runner-up for the festival Director’s Choice Award for Best Feature.
In addition to these features, the following films also played the festival: Kill Your Friends (UK, dir. Owen Harris), Little Sister (USA, dir. Zach Clark), Antibirth (USA, dir. Danny Perez), Karaoke Crazies (South Korea, dir. Sang-chan Kim), and Trash Fire (USA, dir. Richard D. Bates Jr.). Over 70 short films and music videos from all over the world played in the festival’s short programs, and Kier-La Janisse (author of House of Psychotic Women) curated the 3-hour “Saturday Morning All-You-Can-Eat Cereal Cartoon Party” which featured an actual cereal buffet and a secret lineup of cartoons and PSAs from the 1940s to the 1980s.
XConfessions: A Conversation with Erika Lust
Originally published on Daily Grindhouse 22 October 2015
Explicit erotic cinema made a spectacular debut at the Chicago International Film Festival on 21 October 2015 with “XConfessions: A Conversation with Erika Lust.” Barcelona-based filmmaker Erika Lust brought a special director’s cut of several of the best shorts from her series of “XConfessions” short films—each based on a fantasy or experience shared by a member of the xconfessions.com site—to the big screen for a pac
ked house at the AMC River East where the CIFF is held. Following the screening, Lust and local filmmaker Maria Finitzo discussed feminist approaches to porn and Lust took some questions from the audience.
The theatrical cut of XConfessions consists of a series of shorts presented in versions specially prepared for this theatrical presentation. Launched a little over two years ago, xconfessions.com currently hosts about sixty short films all directed by Erika Lust. Users submit sexual fantasies or stories, and Lust chooses a handful to made into shorts. These films are varied in look and tone, but the uniting principles behind them are Lust’s “sex-positive feminist” approach to porn and her commitment to detail-oriented, artful filmmaking. The shorts on xconfessions.com bear more resemblance to mainstream independent cinema than contemporary porn. Lust shoots with an ArriAlexa camera, a professional digital cinema camera used for many mainstream films including Hollywood studio productions. Lust and her team put careful thought into every level of production, from costume and production design and lighting to thorough post-production sound and color correction to give each film a unique feel.
Running just under an hour, the XConfessions theatrical cut includes a fairly representative variety of shorts. “The Art of Spanking” takes a peek into the fantasies of a man who loves to spank his lover. “I Wish I Was a Lesbian” shows the sexy dream of a young woman traveling through Europe as she stays with a lesbian couple in Barcelona. In “Dude Looks Like a Lady,” a man lets his girlfriend give him a makeover with makeup and lingerie as a prelude to sex. “Boat Buddies with Benefits” tells the story of a man and woman who buy a boat together as a business venture to rent it out for parties, but enjoy some amorous alone time at sea as well. “A Blowjob Is Always a Great Last-Minute Gift Idea!” is a brief, funny short in which a man sits on a park bench and suggestively sucks on a life-sized cock popsicle. A young woman living in Barcelona extols some of the lesser-appreciated virtues of being an Airbnb host in “The Couchsurfer.” In “Mad Men Porn,” a woman working in an antique store fantasizes about sex on a very nice desk with an attractive man who comes into her shop. And “Do You Find My Feet Suckable?” depicts a chance encounter between an artist and a young woman in a library that begins with tentative flirtation and escalates into a spontaneous, passionate tryst.
These shorts gave viewers who may not have been familiar with the xconfessions.com site a good cross-section of Lust’s short film work. The versions of the films prepared for this presentation are excellent examples of her cinematic approach to adult filmmaking, with beautiful cinematography and production design and attractive, charismatic performers. The program included explicit sex, but the films were edited down a bit from the originals on the site. None of these cuts were made for explicit content, however, just to get the story of each short in and showcase some of the sex in each one. The audience was respectful and very quiet for the first two shorts, but the humor in “Boat Buddies with Benefits” officially broke the ice and earned the first big laughs of the night. The shorts mostly give a quick sketch of their characters, but it’s just enough to develop genuine affection for them, which is a huge departure from standard contemporary porn and its intense focus on anatomy over any kind of character or context. Lust’s focus on female pleasure and care to provide high production values is reminiscent of the sort of work Zalman King made famous in softcore films in the 1990s, although with real sex and an even more pronounced emphasis on the technical and aesthetic aspects of filmmaking.
Following the screening, Erika Lust spoke with Chicago-based documentary filmmaker Maria Finitzo about the approach to porn that the XConfessions project represents and then opened up the floor to questions from the audience. This part of the evening got off to a somewhat uncomfortable start as a cranky old white guy complained that the performers in the films had “porn star bodies” and didn’t look like the people in the theater (whether he purposely meant to insult the relative attractiveness of everybody at the screening was unclear). Further, he complained that there were no “African-American or Latino” performers, or any over 40 years of age. Unsurprisingly, this observation did more to underline the man’s ignorance of modern porn standards than anything. The performers in the XConfessions presentation are hardly representative of mainstream concepts of “porn stars”: they are attractive and in good shape, but this is a world away from the pumped-up lips and breast implants so prevalent among women in mainstream pornographic video. And while many if not all of the performers in the films are probably in their 20s and 30s, none of them look like “teens.” These are adults with attractive, natural bodies, not people who have had plastic surgery to conform to an unrealistic ideal.
Lust addressed this question by pointing out that there is a wider range of performers in the shorts on the web site, and that finding performers willing to engage in real sex on camera frequently requires hiring performers who do make a living at porn. She works as hard at finding diverse performers in front of the camera as she does at finding talented, hard-working women to work behind it. Lust estimates that at any given time, her film crew is up to 90% women, which she noted has occasionally made male performers feel a little uncomfortable. Given that mainstream porn productions tend to have overwhelmingly male crews, this probably gives those performers an idea of what their female co-stars experience on typical porn shoots.
After that initial bump in the road, the questions from the audience were considerably more friendly and intelligent. One audience member asked whether Lust would ever make a male/male film. She has previously, although she admitted she did not feel like it was her best work as she was not able to directly identify with the experience. She made another XConfessions short titled “Pansexuals” that shows two men and two women having sex with each other that she felt more confident about, and said she is willing to try it again if the right “confession” came along. Other audience members asked Lust’s opinion on whether the chauvinist climate of modern porn is worse than it was in the “Golden Era” of the 1970s and 1980s, how she maintains a balance between making films that are “accessible” versus the ubiquitous nature of free porn that is by definition more “accessible,” how much of the action of the films is blocked in advance and how much is worked out on the spot by the performers, and many other topics. Lust answered intelligently, warmly, and thoroughly. Hopefully many audience members who may not have been familiar with adult film and porn beyond stereotypical “porn stars” and cheap digital video learned much and were inspired to seek out more progressive alternatives.
The program was a resounding success, and hopefully that success will resonate with both the Chicago International Film Festival and other film programmers in the city. Providing a major public space in which artful, funny, sex-positive adult film can be viewed and discussed is important toward the creation of more such cinema. Erika Lust and her contemporaries in feminist adult entertainment are doing important work in giving women a voice in an industry in which they are too often used more as props than treated like people. Here’s hoping next year Chicago International may bring her back for a new presentation, and/or incorporate more progressive sex films in their programming. With any luck, appearances and presentations like these will help inspire more female filmmakers to pick up a camera and show the world what female pleasure on film looks like to them.
Fantastic Fest 2015: Day 1
Originally published 25 September 2015
This year’s Fantastic Fest is being held from September 24th through October 1st. This is the eleventh year for the festival, which has become one of the biggest and most important genre film festivals in the world. This is the first year I’ve been able to attend the festival, and I’ll be covering it by sending a dispatch breaking down my views for the films screening each day. Here we go!
Lazer Team (USA, dir. Matt Hullum)
Four guys accidentally steal the pieces of an alien super-suit on the eve of a battle for the future of Earth. This is bad news since they’re not id
eal candidates for saving the world, but they’re the best chance humanity has against the highly intimidating Warg. Can they come together to become the Champion of Earth? Lazer Team is the first feature film from Rooster Teeth, who previously made the popular web series Red Vs. Blue. Partially funded by a successful Indiegogo campaign, Lazer Team is light, goofy fun that scores some big laughs from its game ensemble cast and some inspired performances in small supporting roles. The special effects range from impressive to iffy, but this is so much fun that’s not really a distraction. This is just a good time, and the rare hybrid of sci-fi and comedy that actually works.
The Keeping Room (USA, dir. Daniel Barber)
During the U.S. Civil War, sisters Augusta (Brit Marling) and Louise (Hailee Stanfeld) and their family’s slave Mad (Muna Otaru) tend to their isolated farm while their father and brother are away fighting. When Louise is injured by an animal, Augusta sets off to find medicine and crosses paths with a pair of Union scouts. The Keeping Room is an eerie, unsettling period piece. When Augusta wonders aloud whether it’s “the end of the world” and “all the men killed all the other men,” it doesn’t seem like much of a reach. Director Daniel Barber uses long stretches of quiet and beautiful widescreen compositions to make Civil War-era America feel like a ghost planet. The film is somewhat less successful once it reveals its more exploitative intent and turns into a relatively familiar siege/home invasion story in its second half, but The Keeping Room is still a unique, technically impressive thriller with a roster of great performances.
Belladonna of Sadness (Japan, dir. Eiichi Yamamoto)
Jeanne is a pure, young newly wed bride who is forced to pay with her body when her new groom Jean can’t afford the marriage tax demanded by the Lord of their village. This assault awakens something in Jeanne, what at first seems to be a mischievous sprite but soon is revealed to be Satan himself. They engage in a battle of wills in which Jeanne tries to persevere in the face of intense misery inflicted by the men in power over the land and people where she lives, while Satan offers her revenge in exchange for her soul. Released in Japan in 1973, Belladonna of Sadness has never been officially released in the States before and this astonishing 4K restoration is the best possible way it could have made its debut. Much of the film is presented as long horizontal or vertical tableaus across which the camera pans, and this new restoration allows the viewer to see every pencil line, brush stroke, and burst of color. The Fantastic Fest program calls his a “seminal psychedelic masterpiece,” and that’s not an overstatement.
The Unrepentant Cinephile Page 118