Film fest resurrects raunch on reel

After working my way through six of the sex-themed, gravitating-towards-porn shorts comprising the Raunchorama Resurrected! segment of this year’s queer film festival, the words philosophical, intelligent, sexy, sensual, quirky, and even hysterical, come to mind as appropriate descriptors of the racy reelwork that’s in store.

When Amber Dawn reclines languidly before the camera in Girl on Girl and says convincingly and matter-of-factly, “There is a lot of room in the queer community for gay men and queer women to fetishize each other, and to be attracted to each other,” and then Michael V Smith’s Cookie La Whore signals his intention to “pop his girl cherry” her, you know you’re in for a 360-degree take on gender identity-bending sex play.

“It’s a very taboo attraction,” Dawn readily acknowledges.

“I wanted to challenge who gets to represent girl and I wanted to challenge who gets to say how I represent myself,” Smith elaborates. “There’s a lot of man in me but there’s a lot of girl in me, and I like playing with that.”

It’s heady stuff —in more ways than one.

In the midst of dildo probings, fisting, giggles, handjobs, blowjobs and something akin to the missionary thrown in for good, traditional measure, both Smith and Dawn also bare virtually all on their insecurities about body image and the struggles with sexual performance anxiety —revelations that are definitely not part of the tired, glossy, surgically-enhanced and made-for-the-corporate-type fare that is the stuff of straight porn.

“I’m afraid my dick won’t look great on camera,” offers the always frank Smith.

He also admits —wide-eyed —that he’s afraid people might think he’s a “big, crazy, fuckin’ freak.”

For me, Girl on Girl sets the tone for the rest of the queer bawdiness Out on Screen has lined up for its porn-friendly, porn-savvy audience.

Fistfull also moved me.

As a nude, nipple-pierced woman lies, then bobs and weaves into light and shadow, director Laurel Swenson’s voice compellingly recounts the evolution of her desire for women and how her imagination envisages being with women.

“Those imagined movements were exciting, and they did it for me —where the boys just couldn’t. They pointed to a way of fucking that could wake my skin.”

In simple terms and within 10 minutes, Swenson unwraps the movement of her desire from the at-first soft and sensuous novelty of actually exploring women’s bodies to a craving for more —the sting of a slap and a lover’s harsh, threatening commands.

“When did I first begin to fetishize force?” Swenson wonders.

“Make a fist, show me your strength. Fuck me,” Swenson demands of an unseen lover.

Of course, no raunch fest would be worth its salt without toilet sex. Except Toilet Mouth takes sex with a toilet oh-so-literally.

At first, our eager protagonist cups and caresses the bulging underside of a toilet bowl as you would a full breast. Then he passionately goes down on the space cut into the toilet seat as if moving between a woman’s parted thighs.

The finale is a very earnest blowjob on the flusher.

The quirkiness doesn’t end there.

One of my favourites is AbDADAduction, a silent-movie styled, hilarious sex romp in which a feisty group of women decked out in clown, bear and dominatrix wear abduct a homophobic man and instruct him in the ways of anal and other kinky pleasures.

The intention is to showcase a mixed sex programme, says Out on Screen executive director Drew Dennis.

“It’s not a women’s sex programme, it’s not a men sex programme. It’s a raunchy sex programme that’s intended for everyone of all genders —the idea of bringing everyone into the room together and watching some raunchy sex on screen.”