Work all hot and steamy

The Sex, Labour, Smut film festival
peeks under the covers of the skin trade

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Spending a Friday night sitting in a darkened theatre watching people fuck on screen might not be the usual path otherwise liberal-leaning folks choose to get their bleeding-heart on. But porn can be enlightening, despite what the schoolmarms say.

This weekend, the organizers of the Sex, Labour, Smut film festival at Concordia’s De Sève cinema hope to illustrate how sex work can be fun and political at the same time, with a wide spectrum of documentaries that look at sex and work, along with a baker’s dozen of old-school black and white stag flicks from the 1920s to 1950s. The latter will be accompanied by live music courtesy of Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled.

“I got the idea last year,” says Ezra Winton, programmer for Concordia’s weekly Cinema Politica doc screening series. “I’d been previewing about 250 docs for Cinema Politica and noticed a surge on porn, but I found all of them unsatisfactory in terms of politics, agency, perspective and diversity.”

Winton combined a long-simmering plan to curate a weekend film festival with the ever-present interest in intercourse. But finding the relevant context—and content—was key. So he approached Concordia film studies prof Tom Waugh and, says Waugh, between both their extensive rolodexes of filmmakers and distributors, were able to produce “programming through networking.”

Don’t panic, it’s just a job

The films they programmed make an eclectic bunch. Besides the Friday night stag films, the movies provide a varied look at sex work and the people in the industry. The tones vary from the playful to the serious, but the two, along with co-programmers Svetla Turnin and Shannon Harris, assiduously avoided the dour and dreary “moral panic” films—most notably Not a Love Story, Bonnie Sherr Klein’s 1981 documentary made for the NFB. In movies like Not a Love Story, says Waugh, “sex workers were allowed a voice only if they were converted.”

In the documentaries Winton had screened for Cinema Politica, he says, he “found two themes that were recurring: Moral panic and voyeurism, from a heterosexual male perspective. We wanted to move away from that, to be non-phobic, to celebrate differences and diversity, offer queer representation. We wanted to allow agency for sex workers.”

The festival’s timing is prescient: Sex workers in Toronto began their arguments before the courts last week to have the current prostitution laws struck down, saying they are unconstitutional and put them at risk. “Sex work and pornography are increasingly politicized,” says Waugh. “The Harper government consistently blocks any reform to the Criminal Code. These documentaries can intervene in the discussion around sexuality, sex work and pornography.”

Beyond the broad range of subjects both political and personal, the common thread running through the festival is a call for respect, safety and dignity. “We are advocating that sex work should be decriminalized and treated like other labour, with legitimate labour codes and unions,” says Waugh.

Capitalism and clam soup

But no matter how much a progressive wants to advocate for sex workers and their right to earn a living as they please, the sticky muckiness of the industry can’t be escaped—or ignored. One of the festival’s short films shows is The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Porn, which looks at the explosion of gay erotica in the former Eastern Bloc since 1989. It isn’t pretty—one image shows a casting director literally checking the teeth of a would-be performer (although Waugh believes the shot is staged). And while Waugh says that “the ugly side of sex work comes from criminalization and prevailing attitudes,” the festival also shows “what’s the seedy side and the other side in a historical context.”

However, the old-timey stag flicks, he says, have “an innocence” about them. “There’s a jocund atmosphere about them. They were meant to provoke catcalls from the audience. There are a lot of food jokes.”

Food jokes?

“Yeah, in one of them, a guy is going down on a woman and the title card says something like, ‘Clam soup for lunch!’”

Don’t look for too many dildos or threesomes in these films. While there is some same-sex action, Waugh says that, compared to what mainstream porn offers today, “There isn’t as much lesbo stuff. They hadn’t yet become formulaic. But male homoerotica was still the biggest taboo.” The programmers also shied away from overtly racist films.

The festival, both Waugh and Winton say, is not a celebration of pornography or sex work. Porn, Waugh says, “is there. Being pro or anti is reductive and simplistic, and polarizing. We have to acknowledge the reality of it, to question it and critically explore it.”

NOSE TO THE GRINDSTONE: (l to r) Live Nude Girls Unite!,
Bad Girl, The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Porn

THE SEX, LABOUR, SMUT FESTIVAL RUNS
FROM FRIDAY, OCT. 16– SUNDAY, OCT. 18
AT CONCORDIA’S J.A. DE SÈVE CINEMA
(1400 DE MAISONNEUVE W.). SEE
CINEMAPOLITICA.ORG/SMUTFESTIVAL
FOR LISTINGS. ADMISSION BY DONATION,
$5 FOR THE FRIDAY NIGHT STAG FILMS.