Short films A-Z HERE
Abbreviations:
H = Hetero, S = Gay, L = Lesbian, T = Transgender,
NX = does not contain explicit sex scenes, X = contains explicit sex scenes,
D = documentary film, FT = Fetish, SW = Sexwork
(films on this year's special theme sex work & prostitution),
F = films made by female directors
V.O. / S NX
25.10., 18:00, Kant 2, Short film programme "Found Footage Experimente"
USA, 2006, 59 minutes, William E. Jones, German Premiere, original version with English subtitles
William E. Jones's new body of work was inspired by his parallel career as an archivist in the gay adult video industry. In the course of viewing hundreds of hours of porn, he has developed a fascination with its marginalia: establishing shots revealing urban landscapes of the recent past, charmingly inept dialogue scenes, and close-ups of performers, many now dead. This material, while of no particular commercial use, can be seen as an invaluable document of a lost world of eroticism and sociability. For his videos, in a variation on what DJs call a "mash-up," Jones combines segments of sound with segments of picture, making decisions based upon the length of the segments rather than their content. "V. O." draws from the non-sexual scenes of gay porn films produced before 1985, such as Tom De Simone's "Confessions of a Male Groupie", Fred Halsted's "L. A. Plays Itself", and Joe Gage's "Kansas City Trucking Co.", "El Paso Wrecking Corp.", and "L. A. Tool and Die", and pairs them with fragments of the soundtracks of European art films not distributed in the U. S. The somewhat arbitrary juxtaposition of diverse "found" materials often yields surprisingly appropriate results, suggesting a new narrative space, and paying tribute to a former era of gay life and cinephilia.