film series

Recently, I attended a screening of Equality U (2008) at The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum as part of the Sex+++ Documentary Film Series.  This presentation's guest moderator was David Milhalfy.  He is a Ph.D. student at Univ. of Chicago Divnity School.  Assisting as always, was Lisa Junkin, Education Coordinator for the Hull House Museum itself.

Equality U documents a group of 33 young activists traveling to Christian Universities that have a policy of denying access to gay students.  Most if not all these activists are themselves Christian in some fashion. 

I care very much for the ability for anyone and everyone to be able to choose their own sex, gender and body definitions and identity.  I think it is awful that students find themselves in these universities hiding, lying and living in fear.  One statistic mentioned that BYU has the highest gay student suicide rate.  I think that treating people like that - the gang intimidation and bullying that comes from the student body and faculty being directed at these isolated and vulnerable students (who happen to be paying their tuition) - is an awful, awful thing.

And, so is this movie...but for different reasons. 

I attended the recent screening of Liberty in Restraint, a documentary about BDSM phtographer Noel Graydon directed by Michael Ney.  The film was shown at The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum as part of the Sex+++ Documentary Film Series.  This week's guest moderator was a prominent member of Chicago's BDSM community, assisted by Lisa Junkin, Education Coordinator for the Hull House Museum itself.

Since next week I’m going to Africa forever and ever, “Boy I Am” — the June 9th screening at my sex-positive documentary film series — was the last one I’ll be able to attend in person. The film series will continue. It’s going to be coordinated by our amazing Hull-House Education Coordinator Lisa, plus discussion facilitators we recruited from among regular Sex+++ attendees! But I, alas, will be far away being eaten by lions. (Yes. Eaten by lions! … I’m getting a bit loopy from lack of sleep, caused by running around trying to wrap up my life.)

Happily, though, the June 9th screening was a really good one … okay, they’re all really good. But this was really good! There were lots of people in attendance (I’d estimate 30-40), which surprised me — as I said in my last sex-positive documentary report, I was figuring that attendance would generally be lower for the second half of the series. Maybe some people were tempted to come by the presence of filmmaker Sam Feder, who was a great contributor to the discussion! Or maybe I’m just wrong about what films have wide appeal. Or maybe now Sex+++ is getting famous enough that people are just excited about Sex+++, more than about any particular film. Hey, I hoped to start an ongoing salon … it seems like I’ve somewhat succeeded!

So it seems I’m leaving Chicago soon — very soon! — and going to Africa.

When I try to tell the story of the sex-positive activism I’ve done here in Chicago, it’s kinda difficult. A lot of it snuck up on me. A lot of it was rather a surprise.

I’ve been on a career track towards going to Africa to do AIDS education for the last two years. I was never sure when I was going to be sent away, though — in fact, my departure was delayed twice. In the meantime, I was solidifying my BDSM identity; I came into that four years ago, and the learning process has only accelerated recently. I was also running lots of events for fun; I didn’t think of it this way at the time, but in retrospect, that was an incredibly helpful learning experience. And I’ve always been extremely interested in sex and culture.

Last year, I briefly dated a documentary filmmaker. Dating him both got me more interested in documentaries — I had previously been far more interested in fiction — and gave me a small window into what the film festival process is like. When I heard that “Passion and Power” (a history of vibrators and female sexuality) was screening in Chicago, I dragged my favorite gender studies friend Lisa to come see it with me.

After “Passion and Power”, the conversation went something like this:

Me: That was great! You and I should have a regular sexuality film night.
Lisa: You know, I bet people besides us would come to see that ….

Originally written on June 9

We're settling into a smaller audience at my sex-positive documentary film series -- I think it's possible that July 28 (which I have mentally dubbed "porn night") will draw the same kind of standing-room-only audiences we had at some of the earlier screenings, but I'm guessing that we'll otherwise continue to have smallish audiences (15-30 people). This doesn't particularly worry me; I somewhat expected it, in fact. The early films I scheduled for the series are both difficult to find information about -- few mainstream venues screen documentaries about BDSM! -- and quite accessible in tone. That is, early Sex+++ documentaries were more along the lines of introductory or "101", while the films I've scheduled later tend to be about more complicated or esoteric topics.

For instance, "The Aggressives" is about a specific lesbian subculture ....

I half-suspected this would happen: after our sixth screening (the bisexuality documentary) was overwhelmed with people, the seventh movie in my sex-positive film series was far quieter. It was nice to have breathing room! The really cool thing about this is that I can now promote the film series to new groups ... I've been afraid to do any new promotion because we've had so many people at some screenings, I'm nervous that we'll be overwhelmed. So now that I can do some more reaching out, I'd love new ideas about new people I can tell about the film series!

In the meantime ....

I've taken a while to post about it because I went to San Francisco on the interim, but the last Sex+++ film was "It's Still Elementary" -- courtesy of GroundSpark: Igniting Change Through Film.

"It's Still Elementary" is a bit of a meta-documentary: a documentary about a documentary! In 1996, a film called "It's Elementary" confronted the question of how to educate grade-school kids about gay and lesbian issues. It showed a number of grade-school educators taking on the issue -- in the 1996 political climate, they risked their jobs to do so! -- and it also showed the kids in their classes creating their own respectful, honest conversations on the subject. Of course there was a firestorm of controversy around "It's Elementary", especially when it was broadcast on TV in 1999. Conservative religious groups did things like call it a "powerful pro-homosexual propaganda film" and mount fundraising campaigns against airing it, writing to their followers that "If we fail to take a stand to put a stop to this outrage, the sin of sexual perversion could be promoted to a potential audience of tens of millions of children" (source).