Our Story

WHAT WE DO:
Comstock Films offers a genuinely new vision of couples' sexuality in this groundbreaking and award-winning series of explicit documentary-style features of real-life lovers having real sex.

Truly adult depictions of explicit sexuality are all but absent from the cinematic landscape, and when they do appear they are inevitably contextualized by despair or ennui. Indeed, "intent to arouse" is often cited as the dividing line between art and porn. Of all the emotions a director might hope to induce in an audience, arousal remains the last taboo—a taboo Tony Comstock gleefully breaks. There are no coy angles in Comstock Films productions; no fades to black. Visually, these films are the collision of sex and the moving image rendered as pure joy. But the impact is not limited to what we see:

"Flesh without context is of no more interest to me than sex without love," says Comstock. "In my films, context is provided by an intimate conversation with each couple that is, in some ways, more revealing than the sex."

Comstock Films offers a new erotic vision. It's not art, not pornography, but a cinematic exploration and celebration of the very human experience of sex.

WHO WE ARE:
Comstock Films founder Tony Comstock came to New York City in the early 90’s as a journeyman commercial photographer and advertising copywriter. In short order, New York City decided his talents were better suited to film and video. Over the course of a dozen or so years he directed films for Fortune 500 companies, and circled the world several times on both commissioned and self-financed documentary projects. Read Tony's blog here!

In 1995 he met his wife Peggy, and with her on second camera, they began shooting experimental erotic shorts that were to become the conceptual and technical foundation for Comstock Films. Read Peggy's Blog here!

HOW WE GOT OUR NAME:
The real Anthony Comstock was a prude of the first order, but he was also a man who knew how to get things done. In 1866 he formed the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and by 1873, had succeeded in getting the U.S.Congress to pass the "Act of the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use" commonly known as "The Comstock Act".

The Comstock Act was used to suppress erotic art and literature (Comstock boasted about the number of "libertines" that he had driven to suicide,) as well as making the distribution of birth control information a crime. In 1914, women's reproductive health pioneer Margaret Sanger was prosecuted under the Comstock Act, with Anthony himself in attendence.

Anthony Comstock is widely acknowledged as history’s greatest censor. As a special, unpaid Postal Inspector for the U.S. government, he was responsible for the destruction of an estimated 160 tons of literature and photos. Among the destroyed material were novels now considered masterworks of the English language, information on birth control, and medical text books. In addition to his campaign against all materials that addressed sex, Comstock also campaigned against modern art and literature, which he labeled “impure.” Nearly 100 years after his death, the ghost of Anthony Comstock still casts a long shadow over our cultural and sexual landscape.

Comstock Films is founded in memory of Anthony Comstock, and dedicated to using film to celebrate the freedoms and pleasures he fought so hard to suppress. We are pleased to offer explicit films that revel in the pleasures of sexual relations between consenting adults. We hope that viewing our films, either alone or with a loved one, will move you to revel in the pleasure of your own sexuality.