Leather Bar., meanwhile, isn’t compelling at all. They are compelling to watch because they retain their subjectivity, an attempt to present something different from pornography’s more common objectification. The result is, ideally, submissive actors performing their own wish fulfillment as a therapeutic act. Yet the goal of is for actors to avoid any affectations, anything exaggerated or fake. Admittedly, participation in one of these videos is still effectively a performance. Voros is more interested in the face, contorted in the ecstasy of agony, than she is in the whip or the machine. Yet the film’s best moments come from a rawer examination of sexuality, peering into what actually emerges from ’s complete rejection of “acting.” The whole act of filming BDSM sex becomes transformational, more about the submissive participant’s emotional journey than anything else. This is understandable, and there are definitely a whole lot of misconceptions out there regarding what probably happens in The Armory. Voros is preoccupied with making this point, defending from the perception of BDSM pornography as exploitative and abusive. The staff at The Armory is very insistent upon a positive working environment. If an actor is being whipped and is loudly pretending to be in a great deal of pain, how can you tell when things have gone too far? Directors at will stop a shoot immediately if they think they’ve pushed someone even the slightest bit too far, as a rule. Heightened performances are actively discouraged in favor of real, genuine responses to the BDSM activities. The unexpected central element in their production style is that they are not interested in acting. The real focus is on how the directors at go about creating these videos. It isn’t really the sex either, though there are plenty of titillating moments among the film’s 80 minutes. That being said, the business side of things is not really the most exciting part of Voros’s documentary. appears to be at the top of the pack in this particular subset of the porn industry. It’s the perfect place to shoot a wide variety of BDSM videos, and founder Peter Acworth has encouraged quite a bit of expansion and diversification. In 2006 the company purchased the San Francisco Armory, an intimidating historical relic in the middle of the Mission District. One of them succeeds gracefully the other most certainly does not.įirst up, pornography! is a group of various fetish sites, based in San Francisco.
Both films try to take apart the way that we perform and perceive sexuality. The other is Christina Voros’s Kink, a documentary about Internet pornography company produced by Franco. in which Franco and his co-director Travis Mathews ( I Want Your Love) try to recreate the lost 40 minutes of sexually explicit footage cut from William Friedkin’s Cruising. The first is a more personal project, the ostensibly nonfiction Interior. He has two films on the subject at this year’s NewFest, New York City’s premiere LGBT film festival. James Franco is into bondage, apparently.