Yep, it’s yet another unexpected search string from the ComstockFilms.com referral logs.

As it happens, yesterday I was talking to Freddy of FreddyandEddy.com, a website devoted to helping couples navigate the (often intimidating and off-putting) world of commercial sex products. One of the things we talked about was that while the world of sextoys have really come of age, and there’s now a wide variety of truly lovely, truly well-made dildos, vibrators, sex-furniture, lubes and other fun things to use on your or your lover’s body, the world of things to watch is still characterized by videos that mostly range from embarrassing to downright insulting. It’s not hard for me to imagine that the same woman who would be delighted if her husband came after her with a full compliment of Njoy pleasure tools would be disinterested, or even vaguely disgusted by porn.

Overwhelmingly porn simply is not respectful, let alone celebratory of the things that most people understand to be wholesome and pleasurable about sex, and the problem I have with typical pro-porn retort of “it’s just harmless fantasy”, is it always seems laden with the implication that if you, the offended viewer, can’t help but see through the thin coating of “harmless fantasy” spread over top down to the retrograde attitudes about sexuality and shabby production and generally crummy values expressed in porn, then you’re the one with the problem. Time and time again, I see people , especially women, tell other women that the reason they don’t like porn is because they’re prude, uptight, or “not that advanced sexually”, and I just think that’s wrong. I know too many women who are absolutely uninhibited about sex, but are left totally cold, or even off-put by porn.

I will say this to the woman who finds herself upset by her husband’s porn viewing habits: the fact that your husband watches porn that seems as if it was made by a not too bright, misogynistic 15 year-old boy doesn’t mean the porn he’s watching represents his secretly held views about sex and women, any more than a wife fucking herself with a Fun Factory toy means she secretly wishes that her husband was some sort of cyber-vibrator-droid.

(Of course there are a lot more permutations. For whatever reason, plenty of women seem to buy into the idea that they’re most important role in their marriage is as the sexual gatekeeper, slowly starving themselves, their husbands, and their relationships of pleasure and intimacy. A woman like that probably should be concerned about her husband’s porn viewing habits, though likely not for the reasons she thinks. And plenty of guys are insensitive dickheads who don’t think twice about how the the porn they watch makes their spouses feel.)

Judging men by the porn they watch is sort of like judging women by what they had to stuff in their snatches 15-20 years ago. But the only thing the vaguely cadavorous dildos and hard white plastic vibrators that used to characterize sex toys said about women is that when it comes to taking care of yourself sexually, a lot of time something is better than nothing, even when that something is pretty crummy. Thankfully there has been some progress since the days of the white plastic dimestore vibrator. Standards and expectations have been raised, and rather than being silly and embarrassing, today’s best sextoys are beautiful statements about the importance of sexual pleasure.

Will that ever happen with porn? I don’t know. You can’t prototype a movie. All your R&D goes into making the final product, which makes the entire undertaking riskier. And as our recent misadventure in Australia points out, sexually explicit movies still don’t have access to the market place that sextoys do, so while Njoy can put just as much into making tools as a company that make surgical tools puts into theirs, a the budget of a sexually explicit film has to be scaled against market barriers. The result? Even Shortbus, the most lavishly funded sexually explicit film to date, is still a low-budget indie.

Meanwhile, if your otherwise mostly wonderful husband watches porn and it has your panties in a twist, have a little compassion for the poor guy that there isn’t something for him to watch that is as lovely as Eros Bodyglide is for basting your naughty bits. In fact, chances are pretty good that he is embarrassed by what he strokes to.

And if you’re a guy whose wife feels wounded by the fact that you watch porn, take another look at what you’re watching, but this time after you’ve blown your load. Chances are you’ll feel a little more sympathetic to her point of view too.

For all of you who have been waiting with bated breath, the CineKink schedule is up!

DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER is on the Passion Plays program, starting at 8:30PM on Saturday, October 21. Also on the Passion Plays program are:

ROAST RABBIT, PERUVIAN GIRL AND DESOLATION, 12 min.
Dir. Pablo Valiente

UNTITLED FIRST PORNO 6 min.
Dir. Kirby Ferguson

HONEY AND BUNNY 10 min.
Dir. Eva Midgley

FILTHY FOOD 5 min.
Dir. T. Arthur Cottam

HEADSHOT 9 min.
Dir. Jennifer Lyon Bell

And don’t forget, everyone who comes to the Passion Plays session will go home with a sample size bottle of Eros Bodyglide, courtesy of our friends at Pjur USA!

See you there!

Apparently Google thinks we have the answer to that question; which just goes to show that Google’s search algorithms aren’t as sharp as some people think. I’m sure they’re working on it.

On the other hand, we’re getting more visitors than ever on the search string yummy sex. I have to agree with Google on this one. If you’re looking for movies of yummy sex, you could do worse than Comstock Films!

More film festival news! This time the world premiere of XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT at the Berlin Porn Film Festival. XANA AND DAX will screen October 22th at 10pm at the Kant Kino 5 at Kantstraat #54.

XANA AND DAX is an inside look at the sexual and emotional relationship of Xana and Dax Star, and is said by critics to contain the most intimate 69ing footage ever captured on film. Just this Summer, XANA AND DAX was named Best Straight Sex Scene at the 2006 Emma Awards for Feminist Porn in Toronto Canada.

The Berlin arts festival will also include works from many of the worlds most provocative erotic artists, including: Andreas Fux, Bruce LaBruce, Richard Kern, Maria Cyber, Anja Weber, Emilie Jouvet, Christine Wons, Nan Goldin, Charles Gatewood, Henning von Berg, Isabelle McEwen, Eon McKai, Emilie Jouvet, Annie Sprinkle, Maria Beatty, Todd Verow, Jerry Douglas, Benjamin Meade, Yuji Kitano, Chris Ho, Maria Cyber, Andreas Fux, Christina Wons, Anja Weber, Petra Joy, Eran Kedar, Louis Dupont, Jörg Andreas, Falk Lux, Horst Braun, Akihiro Suzuki, Ela Troyano and Tessa Hughes-Freeland.

Comstock Films produces award-winning, documentary-style erotic films that explore and celebrate the connection and chemistry of real couples having real sex. Comstock Films titles have enjoyed worldwide recognition as outstanding achievements in cinema, appearing in festivals and taking home prizes in Canada, Australia, Sweden, Germany and here in the US.

Other Comstock Films titles include MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, named Best Documentary and Best Overall at the 2002 SinCine New York Erotic Film Festival and Best of the Fest at the 2002 Sexual Health and Pleasure Film Festival; DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER, name Best Documentary at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival; and the soon to be released MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER, Comstock Films’ first shot-on-film, anamorphic widescreen title featuring a straight couple.

DAMOM AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER will have its US premiere at the 2006 CineKink Film Festival, going on October 17-22 at the Anthology Film Archive in New York, NY.

DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER will screen on Saturday October 21 at 8:30PM, and director Tony Comstock will be part of a panel with other New York erotic filmmakers Candida Royalle, Joanna Angel, Joe Gallant, and Michael Lucas, and moderated by Audacia Ray, held at 4:30PM that same day.

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 human relationships, depict it graphically, and celebrate its power. 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.

In July DAMON AND HUNTER was name Best Documentary at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in Melbourne Australia, but was subsequently banned by the Australian government from showing at the 2006 QueerDOC Gay and Lesbian Film Festival held this September in Sydney Australia.

Says director Tony Comstock, “I’ve long known that by making a movie like DAMON AND HUNTER I was charting a course toward making films that would ask provocative questions about collision of sex and the moving image, and personal freedom and the boundaries of the legitimate role of the state. But in all honesty, I never expected DAMON AND HUNTER would be the one to bring these issues to the fore. It’s a very tender-hearted film, there’s really nothing “controversial” about it in anyway, save the fact that we actually see what physical love between two men looks like in intimate detail. I can’t think of a better way to get over the disappointment of not having the film screen in Sydney than by having our hometown premiere at CineKink!”

CineKink is an organization that recognizes and encourages the positive depiction of alternative sexuality in film and television, most visibly through its annual film festival, CineKink NYC.

Comstock Films produces award-winning, documentary-style erotic films that explore and celebrate the connection and chemistry of real couples having real sex. Comstock Films titles have enjoyed worldwide recognition as outstanding achievements in cinema, appearing in festivals and taking home prizes in Canada, Australia, Sweden, Germany and here in the US.

Other Comstock Films titles include MARIE AND JACK: A HARDCORE LOVE STORY, named Best Documentary and Best Overall at the 2002 SinCine New York Erotic Film Festival and Best of the Fest at the 2002 Sexual Health and Pleasure Film Festival; XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT, named Hottest Straight Sex Scene at the 2006 Emma Awards for feminist porn in Toronto, Canada; and the soon to be released MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER, Comstock Films’ first shot-on-film, anamorphic widescreen title featuring a straight couple.

One of the reasons we can make the films we make is because we have a dedicated and patient group of investors that help fund our work. I’m speaking, of course, of the people who take us up on our pre-order offer for upcoming films.

We started the pre-order program with XANA AND DAX: WHEN OPPOSITES ATTRACT. Clever folks jumped on our pre-order offer and got XANA AND DAX for only $12.95.

Some of the folks who pre-ordered DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER waited as much as a year. But in the end their patience was rewarded with an award-winning film at a discount price! (How many other no risk* investments double your money in a year or less?)

Now everyone who had the good sense to get in on the ground floor with MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER is about to see their “investment” pay a handsome return. The narrative has been sequenced and distilled, the sex scene cut together.

Now the whole thing gets viewed and reviewed, looking for what I call the “flat spots”–places where the rhythm and pace bogs down or stumbles, places where the meaning becomes unfocused and attention drifts. This is the real work of editing, this is what turns a sequence of shots into a film.

Meanwhile, Peggy is working on the box-cover art for MATT AND KHYM. Nothing fancy, no tricks to make you think there’s something in the box that’s not really in there. A nice photo, some nice typography. Like the film itself, it’s all about rhythm and balance. It’s about simply letting the film speak for itself.

And to those still waiting on ASHLEY AND KISHA, you have not been forgotten. Whenever I get stuck on MATT AND KHYM I turn my attention to ASHLEY AND KISHA. It’s going to be a lovely film, well worth the wait.

So with the release of MATT AND KHYM just around the corner, I want to take a minute to thank everyone who has pre-ordered a title from us. Your “investment” helps take a little of the pressure off of things around here and lets us take the time to make these movies the way they need to be made. Without you’d we’d have to be churning them out just like everyone else, and that’s something we’re just not interested in doing, and I don’t think you’d be interested in seeing “churned out movies” either. When you think of it that way, I don’t think there’s any other no risk* investments that pay these kinds of dividends!

*All pre-orders are 100% refundable at any time before they ship, for any reason or for no reason at all. Simply ask, and we’ll happy refund your order.

From the BBFC website:

“Occasionally, a work lies on the margin between two categories. In applying the criteria in these Guidelines in such a case, the BBFC takes into account the intentions of the film-maker, the expectations of the public in general and the work’s audience in particular, and any special merits of the work.”

I am curious by what process the BBFC divines intentions, expectations, who is or isn’t the audience, or what they regard as special merit.

My thanks to Peter Black for pointing me to this bit of beauty from my nation’s past:

We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

AN OPEN LETTER TO INTERESTED PARTIES IN AUSTRALIA AND ELSEWHERE CONCERNING THE CANCELLED QUEERDOC SCREENING OF DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER

My name is Tony Comstock. I am an American filmmaker, and the director of the documentary DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER, a film that explores a gay relationship with an unusual level of candor, sentiment, and sensuality.

Last July it was my privilege and honor to be invited to show DAMON AND HUNTER at Queer Screen’s 2006 queerDOC festival. Unfortunately, in mid-August, the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) denied Queer Screen’s request for a festival exemption to show the film.

Since the decision, there has been some speculation that the OFLC might grant an exemption to an altered version of DAMON AND HUNTER, and that this altered version might be screened at queerDOC. This is not to be. On August 31 I informed Queer Screen that I could not alter the film to meet the OFLC’s demands.

As there are already people who have purchased tickets to see DAMON AND HUNTER at queerDOC, I thought an explanation of my reasons was in order.

First, I would like to thank David Pearce, film programmer for Queer Screen for putting his professional reputation on the line by selecting DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER, and I would like to thank Lex Lindsay, Queer Screen’s manager, for putting his festival on the line to fight for his fellow Australians’ right to see this film. Making a film means nothing if people cannot see it, and I am ever grateful to David, Lex, and the Queer Screen organization for their efforts to try and put this film on a screen, in a cinema, so that it could be experienced by each viewer as a part of an audience. There is something magical about being in the dark, with a group of people you’ve never met before, responding to the film as one. It’s amplifying and affirming to your own emotions, and it’s a shame that people in Sydney have been denied the opportunity to experience DAMON AND HUNTER in this way.

Conversely, I am deeply disappointed by the OFLC’s refusal to grant an exemption for DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER to play at queerDOC, which is the world’s only film festival devoted to gay and lesbian documentary films. Through their actions, the OFLC has needlessly inflicted financial hardship on an already under-staffed and under-funded organization, and has almost certainly ensured that this film will never legally be seen in a legitimate venue in Australia.

The OFLC’s X-rating of DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER means the film cannot legally be screened publicly anywhere, save a video peep booth in Canberra. The OFLC’s X-rating means the DVD cannot legally be used by gay men’s health organizations (as is already being done here in the US). The OFLC’s X-rating means the DVD cannot legally be sold in Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, or New South Wales. And of course the OFLC’s denial of an exemption means a film festival cannot legally screen DAMON AND HUNTER. This is nothing short of a ban. For the OFLC to suggest that it is anything else is disingenuous at best.

By statute, the OFLC holds, and has exercised in the past, wide discretion in the ratings applied to sexually explicit material, and in the granting of festival exemptions. In this instance, for reasons known only to them, they’ve chosen to hide behind the letter of the law, rather than honor the legislative intent, which is their ultimate charter. I would offer that their decisions, in particular their refusal to grant a festival exemption to for the queerDOC screening is heavy-handed, serves no legitimate purpose in maintaining civil order, and is wildly disconnected with the wishes of the vast majority of Australian people.

Since the film’s release, I’ve been overwhelmed and delighted by the enthusiastic response Australians have given DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER. The film has received good reviews, festival laurels, and a warm audience response, all of which confirms my own experience and belief that Australians and Australian society are tolerant and progressive. I’d venture if you asked 100 Australians if an audience of adults, mostly gay men, should be denied the chance to watch a film that celebrates the very essence of what it means to be gay, the overwhelming majority of them would be horrified at the thought. They’d probably go on to say “Thank goodness we don’t do things like that here in Australia!” That’s the insidious thing about censorship; unless it’s done with a thick black marker, most people never realize it’s happened.

There has been some suggestion that an accommodation with the OFLC might have been reached, that the film could have been shown with the sexual content removed, while preserving the artistic and political intent of the film. Indeed, in the past weeks I have spent many hours and thousands of dollars in an attempt to re-cut the film in accordance with the OFLC’s instructions. But in the end I could not reconcile my reasons for making this film with the demands made by the OFLC.

I made this film because I believe depictions of truly joyous and wholesome sex, depictions that represent the overwhelmingly positive and important role that our sexuality plays in our humanity, are all but absent from the cinematic landscape. Moreover, in an age where it is easier than ever to see sexually explicit imagery, it is harder than ever to find imagery that reflects the common reality of sex: that sex is nice; that sex is normal; that sex is good. I made this film because even today, here in America, in Australia, and elsewhere, the state’s role in the most intimate aspects of the lives of its citizens remains an open question.

To show DAMON AND HUNTER as demanded by Australian censorship laws, with all of the sex obliterated would have been to cut out the very heart and soul of this film. It would be a disservice to every person who came to the screening in the hope of seeing a film that would acknowledge their sexuality as something wholesome and noble. To show this film with the sex obliterated is to lend weight to the still pervasive and profound belief that there is something shameful about the giving and receiving of sexual pleasure. To do so under government threat would be to capitulate to everything that I have struggled against, and would acknowledge that the state has ultimate dominion over our minds and our bodies. To do so would be to concede to values regarding freedom and human dignity I find alien and repugnant.

I have been a photographer my entire adult life. In the name of bearing witness to the human condition I’ve documented unspeakable suffering, violence, and death; and for that I’ve been praised as a courageous witness. When I review the scope of people, places and events that have passed before my lens, I am unable to comprehend the censor’s rational for “protecting” adults from photographic images of sexuality. Adults have the capacity and the right to choose for themselves what sort of images they wish to see. They do not need to be protected from images of sex, and least of all from a film like DAMON AND HUNTER. In the face of horrific images we are exposed to each and every day, the OFLC decision is not only unfair, it is perverse.

DAMON AND HUNTER is a film about the joy love and sex brings into our lives. DAMON AND HUNTER is about our manifest right as adults to experience that joy, regardless of whom or how we love. DAMON AND HUNTER is about the dignity we find when we are true to ourselves in the face of adversity and oppression. DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER is a film about what’s best in all of us.

Very sincerely,
Tony Comstock

Just out this week, some nice coverage of Comstock Films and DAMON AND HUNTER in the glossy Australian magazine Bent. The issue closed just days before news of the OFLC decision came down, so there no mention of it in the article. But in a strangely prescient move, Bent printed the entire text of our About page as a sidebar to the article:

Comstock Films is founded in memory of Anthony Comstock, and is 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.

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.

Here in the United States, only recently has the manifest right of adults to choose their own sexual partners, and then make love with their partner in the manner that most pleases them, free from the fear of government sanction, been recognized as a right that is protected by our Constitution.

That’s right, until the Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, regulating whom you fuck and how you fuck, in the privacy of your own home, was still considered a legitimate government concern. Two of the affirming justices have since left the court. The three dissenting justices still sit on the court. Do the math.