Rare & Raw: Early queer and kinky films from 1914 – 1950

InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre is pleased to announce
Rare & Raw: Early queer and kinky films from 1914 – 1950
Thursday, July 2, 2009, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Co-organized by Kelly McCray and Steph Rogerson in conjunction with InterAccess, these films by Kenneth Anger (Fireworks, 1947,) Jean Genet (Un Chant d'Amour (A Song of Love), 1950,) Irving Claw (Bondage Queen, 1950) and Sydney Drew (A Florida Enchantment, 1914,) offer a rare and timely opportunity to view groundbreaking films which influenced the portrayal of sexuality on celluloid.

While hoards of audiences were watching Gone With The Wind, these films were burning up the censors in the US and France, and influenced artists Jean Cocteau and Andy Warhol.

“Window Teasers” will be running Tuesday, June 30 through Thursday, July 2 after dark in the InterAccess Vitrines, viewable from Ossington Avenue. Enjoy cult classics, Burlesque, with Blaze Starr, and Blow Job, by Warhol. Complete programme details are both attached and below.

Join us!
InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre
9 Ossington Avenue
Toronto, ON M6J 2Y8
Canada

T: (416) 599-7206

Kelly McCray and Steph Rogerson would like to thank the staff and board of InterAccess for their support

RARE & RAW: PROGRAMME

SHORTS
Kenneth Anger, Fireworks, 1947
15 mins (silent film with music accompaniment)
Kenneth Anger’s first film, Fireworks was filmed in Los Angeles. This film gained the attention of Jean Cocteau

Jean Genet, Un Chant d'Amour (A Song of Love), 1950
26 mins (silent film with music accompaniment)
French writer Jean Genet's only film, which was banned in France and the US, is set in a French prison. In two adjacent cells are an older Algerian man and young white convict. The eroticism in this film is both subtle and overt, while commenting on both interracial desire and intergenerational lust. The film's highly sexualized atmosphere has been recognized as formative factor to works such as the films of Andy Warhol.

Irving Claw, Bondage Queen, 1950
8 mins (music accompaniment)
A classic bondage and fetish film starring the notorious Betty Page.

FEATURE
Sidney Drew, A Florida Enchantment, 1914
63 mins (silent film with music accompaniment)
This deftly queer and comical film is one of the earliest film representations of queerness in American culture. Set in St. Augustine, Florida, characters eat a magical seed that changes its user into the opposite gender, where men become women, women become men and sexuality is fluid. Typical of the era, African American roles are cast with whites in blackface in the name of slapstick comedy. The representation of race shows the reiterations of colonialism even in the mould-breaking queer content of this film.

Stephanie Rogerson
Department of Visual Arts
University of Western Ontario
John Labatt Visual Arts Centre
Perth Drive
London, Ontario
N6A 5B7
sroger29@uwo.ca