What can I say? I was just over at TinyNibbles.com and saw that Violet has named ASHLEY AND KISHA: FINDING THE RIGHT FIT to her Top Five of 2007 list! Also on the list:

Triple Ecstasy, dir. Kimberly Kane
Debbie Loves Dallas, dir. Eon McKai
Tristan Taormino’s Chemistry #3, dir. Tristan Taormino
Skateboard Kink Freak, dir. Maria Beatty

Well the public screening of ASHLEY AND KISHA: FINDING THE RIGHT FIT did not take place, but there was a judges’ screening of it, and the other six banned films. And guess what? They like us! They really like us! Best Foreign Film, Best Foreign Film and the second most covetted award at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, Most Gratuitous Use of Sex. (The first being Most Gratuitous Use of Violence.) Here’s the full list of awards:

BEST FILM
A Nocturne
Dir: Bill Mousoulis

BEST FOREIGN FEMALE ACTOR
Mihiro - Love Runs Faster Than Blood

Many thanks to festival director Richard Wolstencroft. The Melbourne Underground Film Festival sets the standard for what an underground film festival ought to be; a fearless challenge to the status quo, and a shot across the bow to the powers that be!

I was going to leave this for Peggy to blog; she’s the one who went to Toronto, and she’s the one who brought back the big lucite buttplug trophy (much to the amusement of the Toronto baggage screeners!) But she’s going hammer and tongs with complete redesign of ComstockFilms.com, so I guess that leaves it to me.

Long story short, last Thursday we dropped Peggy off at the airport. A few hours later she was at a pre-event event, a chance to meet the other panelists, and the Good For Her crew. The next night she was up on the dias, giving her take on how our work fits into the feminist porn paradigm. Later that evening MATT AND KHYM: BETTER THAN EVER was named Hottest Love Scene. Many thanks to Good For Her for a great event, and congradulations to the rest of the evenings winners!

Hottest Group Sex Scene
Under the Covers | Candida Royalle; Femme Productions

Indie Porn Pioneer
Anna Span; Easy On The Eye Productions

One surprising thing, to me at least. I figured they wouldn’t go to the expense of flying Peggy up if they weren’t going to haul her up on the stage to give her an award, but I thought it was going to be DAMON AND HUNTER; as a way of recognizing that a lot feminists love looking at men, especially if there’s more than one of them, naked, kissing and fucking. That’s my wife and most of her friends. But even though there were awards for straight sex scenes, lesbian sex scenes, and even an award for Hottest Trans Scene (Go Shine!), nothing for straight up man-on-man action. I guess women getting off to gay sex is still too avant garde, even for porn-positive feminists. There’s always next year!

A few months back we suddenly started to see a bunch of .ru URLs in our referal logs, which it turns out traced back to write-up of MATT AND KHYM on a Russian news website. Well yesterday I started seeing a spike in traffic from the same domain, and this morning I’ve found the source. Articles on ASHLEY AND KISHA and on the Feminist Porn Awards, with a nice call out for MATT AND KHYM.

Новый фильм Тони Комстока: лесбийское порно с реальными парами (ФОТО, КАДРЫ) (That’s the A&K article)

В Торонто проходит кинофестиваль феминистского порно: участники, кадры (ФОТО) (That’s the FPA article)

In about 15 minutes we’re all piling into the car – daughters, dogs, the whole gang – and taking Peggy into the city to catch a plane to the Good for Her Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto.

That will leave me to take care of the kids, the dogs, the house, which is fine with me. What’s not fine with me is not sleeping next to my wife for the next couple of nights, not getting to see and touch her bare body. When we’re apart, I miss her terribly.

But it’s for a good cause, right? I shall find a way to endure.

Nope. Sorry. No joy in Mudville tonight.

It was exciting when they annouced the category. It was exciting to hear the presenter say “Damon and Hunter: Doing it Together, Comstock Films.” It was surprising when applause broked out from a few different point around the theater in response. But the winner isn’t “Damon & Hunter.” It’s Gay Sex in the 70s, a film that Peggy and I watched and enjoyed.

Am I dissappointed? Well sure. Who doesn’t like winning? But mostly I’m just tired. My wake-up time is still on East Coast school dad time, which means I’ve had about 8 hour sleep in the last three days. Hopefully tonight my eyes will stay shut until at least 6AM West coast time. Tomorrow I’m going brunch with Matt and Khym. It will be the first time I’ve seen them since we shot just over two years ago!

I’m off to San Francisco this morning to show the Comstock colors at the GayVN Awards, where DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER is nominated in the Best Alternative Release category. (I guess that means I’m alt-porn after all.)

I’m also looking forward to seeing Violet Blue, Blowfish’s own Christophe, Shine Louise Houston, Thomas R. Roche, and last but definitely not least, brunch with that loviest of loving couples, Matt and Khym. That should be almost enough company to keep me from becoming terminally homesick.

There may be rants and rambling from San Francisco, there may not be. Either way, please cross your fingers for DAMON & HUNTER. It would tickle me to see a GayVN statue next to the big acrylic buttplug “Emma” award XANA & DAX got in Toronto last Summer.

DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER is nominated in the Best Alternative Release category in the 2006 GayVN Awards. Also nominatied are: GAY SEX IN THE 70s, STONEWALL & RIOT, STORY FILMS CLASSICS: THE WILD ONES and THAT MAN: PETER BERLIN

Our thanks to the editors at GayVN for putting us in such esteemed company!

From Fleshbot:

While we relied on our heart (and certain other parts) to come up with our top ten crush objects of the year, we used more a rather objective method to determine our list of 2006’s best gay porn movies: a formula which involved the number of days each movie remained in or near our DVD players; the number of times people asked to borrow our copy; the number of days (or weeks) it took said people to return it; approximate number of ounces of lube we went through while “reviewing” it; and the inverse coefficient of the number of times the word “hot” was used it its press release. So you see, it’s all very scientific.#8 DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER
Though they’re no longer a couple, watching Comstock Films’ porn verité exploration of the relationship between then-boyfriends Hunter James and Damon DeMarco is more than an exercise in wistful nostalgia: the perfect antidote to the glut of overprocessed smut crowding the porn shelves, the conversational, intimate “Damon and Hunter” is both the kind of film your straight girlfriends will keep trying to steal from you as well as a rare look of what porn stars look like when they’re not having sex like porn stars. And any porn DVD that was banned in Australia deserves a space on anyone’s Best Of list as far as we’re concerned.

Butch Harrison, Mannet’s Editor in Chief says, “Thousands of male adult titles are released each year. And, of those releases, our favorites have been pulled out of the quagmire to compile this list, The ManNet 100, selected by ManNet’s editorial team.”

Making the Mannet list caps a stellar year for Comstock Films’ first gay title.

In July 2006 DAMON AND HUNTER played to an overflow crowd and was name Best Documentary at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in Melbourne Australia.

Two months later the film encountered controvery when it was banned by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification from showing a the 2006 QueerDOC Gay and Lesbian Film Festival held in September in Sydney Australia.

In October DAMON AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER drew record crowds at it’s hometown premiere at the New York CineKink Film Festival.

In November, we were invited to submit the film to the !f Istanbul/AFM International Independent Film Festival for inclusion in the in the Rainbow Film program in the 2007 edition of the festival, taking place Feb 15-25, 2007 in Istanbul, Turkey.

But my favorite part is this last bit from Brent Blue’s ManNet Review. He almost seems like he’s not sure he believes he’s seen what he’s seen, but he’s willing to give us the benifit of the doubt!:

Shot by Tony and Peggy Comstock, the scene here is revealing and trusting by Damon and Hunter in allowing the viewer into their private life. The scene is rather short and purposely unglamorous, so it’s often hard to know what really went on, but it is clear that these two men are doing something different than just fucking for the camera. There is emotion here, not faked, not acted, but truthful. It’s an alternative to porn. Not better, not worse, just a different side.

Thanks Brent, Butch, and everyone else at ManNet for naming DAMON AND HUNTER as one of the 100 best of the year!