“Damon and Hunter” heads to queerDOC in Sydney, Australia
Thursday, July 27th, 2006
Success begets success (which can seem so unfair when it’s happening to someone else!); we are more than happy to take our good luck and roll with it. A round of poster and handbill re-design, press-release re-writes and all the rest of the falderal that goes with properly promoting the film. It is both exciting and exhausting, exhausting not because it’s hard work, but because it causes hopefulness, and hopefulness causes me to begin to steel myself against disappointment. (I’m surprised to find out) I’m fragile that way.
For most of my professional life most of my work was on commission – please makes us a picture of X to accomplish Y and we will pay you Z. It’s all very tidy, at least by comparison to making films and then hoping people will like them, hoping people will buy them.
One of my favorite things to say when I want to sound shrewd is that expectation management is the key to a successful low-budget film. But what do you do when something succeeds far beyond any of your own (well-managed) expectations – when hopefulness is feed log after log, and perhaps a dash of gasoline now and then? It’s a bit dizzying, but I hope I get the chance to get used to it!
Below is the press release for queerDOC, in all its self-aggrandizing glory. Longtime readers will recognize bit and pieces from previous blog posts. This journal keeping is proving useful! (Thanks Professor Wenger!)
Syndey, Australia Fresh off its win at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (Best Documentary), Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together moves on to the 2006 edition of queerDOC, the world’s premiere queer documentary film festival. This year’s festival will feature two screenings of Damon and Hunter, to be held at the Dendy Cinema King Street Newtown. Show times are Tuesday 12th Sept at 9.00pm and Wednesday 13th Sept at 7.00pm
Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together is the third in an ongoing series of documentaries from New York based director Tony Comstock. Comstock’s films explore the real and vital role that sexual pleasure plays in binding couples’ relationships. In this case, the couple in question are long time lovers Damon DeMarco and Hunter James, and the film centers around an explicit portrayal of Damon and Hunter making love.
Truly adult depictions of explicit sexuality are all but absent from the modern cinematic landscape, and when they do appear they are inevitably contextualized by despair or ennui. Indeed, the “intent to arouse” is often cited as the dividing line between art and porn. In the whole range of emotions a director might hope to incite in his audience, arousal remains the last taboo – a taboo Tony Comstock gleefully breaks.
“It’s my absolute intention and hope that watching “Damon and Hunter” will be an erotic and arousing experience, ” says Comstock. “Just as a horror movie is intended to scare the pants off the audience, “Damon and Hunter” is absolutely intended to have an effect below the belt. I want people who see this film to think about how good sex can and should be; and in the same way that a horror director wants a physical reaction from his or her audience, I want a physical reaction too. I want this film to turn the audience on, and I want them to feel good about the way this movie touches them.”
To that end the film is completely frank in its depiction of how Damon DeMarco and Hunter James pleasure each other. There are no coy angles; no fade to black. In fact, the camera gazes lovingly at the carnal details, drinking in flesh and reflecting desire. Visually “Doing it Together” is the collision of sex and the moving image rendered as pure joy. But the impact of this film isn’t limited to what we see.
“Flesh without context is no more of interest to me than sex without love,” says Comstock. “In this film, the context is provided through an intimate conversation with Damon and Hunter that in some ways is even more revealing than the sex.”
Tony Comstock offers a new vision. It’s not art, not pornography, but a genuinely entertaining and cinematic exploration and celebration of the very human experience of sex. “Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together” is a hard core love story; it’s a date movie; a fun, sexy and provocative evening out!
First held in October 1998, queerDOC has subsequently become established as an important event on the Australian and international gay and lesbian film festival calendar. queerDOC remains the world’s only documentary film festival focusing on queer (gay, lesbian transgender, transsexual, intersex etc) documentary films. As such it has a worldwide reputation and has access to the best of queer documentaries from around the world.
