International Programmer Angie Driscoll interviews GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR filmmakers Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell

The title says it all! Notorious website insex.com packaged bondage as art and sold kink as caché. Members, models and its founder reveal how money gagged safe-words and power poisoned work environments at this pomo experiment turned porno empire.

Angie Driscoll: How did this film come about and how did you know it was the project for you?

Barbara Bell: Anna and I enjoyed our collaboration on a previous film project in which I wrote the script and we ended up co-directing the piece. When we discussed producing a project of our own, all we could talk about was the crazy Insex studio. We wanted to do a narrative, but didn’t have any money, so we chose to do a documentary. We’ve barely scratched the surface.

Anna Lorentzon: We would always end up laughing about all the crazy things that had been going on at Insex. We finally realized that Insex was our project. I had worked for Insex as a producer, and Barb had been at the Insex studio enough times to see the potential.

What was the hardest thing about shooting this film?

Barbara: Getting Insex staff, models, and members to give any interviews at all. Bondage and SM is an extremely misunderstood and taboo activity. When you add pornography involvement on top of that, you’re way out on the edge, or maybe further.

Anna: We really wanted to get (Insex founder) PD freaking out on camera, the way he was pretty much every day. Since he is a performer, and a control freak, he would not let that happen. As soon as a camera was pointed at him, he turned into professor mode, calm and reflective. Some of the more truthful quotes from PD came out when we were just sitting by his computer talking, camera pointed away, not recording sound.

If you could change one thing about the film or the filmmaking process, what would it be?

Anna: Getting more people to talk more clearly about the end, and PD freaking out on camera.

Barbara: I would change the aftermath, the marketing and selling of the film. It’s too much to expect creative individuals to be intensely creative in their work, and at the same time learn to pitch, market, promote, understand the legal ramifications, and fund it. As we can see in Hollywood cinema, a market-driven platform ends up diluting creative work, if not slicing it to bits.

What did you learn in the process of making this film?

Anna: That if you continue to work and don't give up, eventually you will finish.

Barbara: Coming at this project as a novelist first and then a screenwriter, I learned quite a lot about working with audio-visual elements, especially in the editing process.

What is your greatest fear when taking on a new project?

Anna: Not being able to complete it.

Barbara: Entering the unknown world of a new piece is always daunting. You want to believe you’re up to the creative task, but you never really know until the end. Taking on a film project, as opposed to writing, is much harder because you depend on collaboration with others to make the vision into reality, and that is a minefield.

Answer the following, if you will. My favourite doc of all time is...

Barbara: NIGHT AND FOG.

Anna: CRUMB.

The doc I'm embarrassed to admit I still have never seen is...

Barbara: THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK.

Anna: Having a young child, I'm happy for anything I'm able to see.

The person living or dead I would most like to work with is…

Anna: Alex Norden.

Barbara: Hard to choose just one. Jane Campion or Catherine Breillat.

The film at Hot Docs I really want to see is…

Barbara: AKA ANA.

Anna: P-STAR RISING.

If I weren't a documentary filmmaker, I would be…

Anna: Building a house without filming it.

Barbara: As I am – a writer. I find that I work and play well alone.
http://www.hotdocs.ca/index.php/daily/q_a_graphic_sexual_horror/Angie Driscoll interviews Barbara Bell and Anna Lorentzon

Busy day. We were on a panel in the morning, NFB Coffee Talks: Boys to Men & Sex, Love & Video Tapes.
Hubert Davis, INVISIBLE CITY (Canada)
Barry Greenwald, EXPERIMENTAL ESKIMOS (Canada)
Sarah Goodman, WHEN WE WERE BOYS (Canada)
Anna Lorentzon, Barbara Bell GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR (USA)
Very pleasant experience, moderator Lea Marin was well informed and had lots of specific questions about the films and the process of making them.
There was a lot of talking about how to establish and keep the delicate relationships you need with your subjects, and how to develop and keep them, and the other filmmakers had long processes of showing the film to them alone and in different groups, then discussing the things that they were uncomfortable with. Most of the subject of GSH are very happy with the film, but to this day, PD has still refused to see it. He had an employee watch it, and based on his reactions, initially decided that he wanted about half the film cut. That KGB (the metal man responsible for all those amazing contraptions) watched it later and gave a glowing review helped a little, but not that much. It is very hard to discuss a film, and what to cut out of it, with somebody that has very strong opinions, yet has not and will not watch it. The end result was that we cut one piece out and then just said that there are no legal reasons to remove anything, we have the signed releases and contracts.
And then I sit there feeling like a jerk among all these sensitive documentary filmmakers, for not being able to keep on good foot with, ok, only one of our subjects. And not loosing sleep over it. (That's me, I think Barb did) Yes, we knew all the time that PD would not be happy with anything that wasn't just about the PD world, that other people are not really allowed to have conflicting opinions on situations that he was part of. But we did somehow believe, in our happy frenzy of getting accepted at Slamdance, that he would be able to see the film as a whole.

Anyway, interviews the rest of the day, short nap that turned out a bit longer that planned, but I still made it to the filmmaker dinner.

Graphic Sexual Horror ***
Dir Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell. May 5, 11:59pm, Bloor Cinema; May 8, 9:45pm, Innis Town Hall.
Even the most adventurous viewers may reach their limits with this all-too-aptly-titled doc about insex.com, a bondage and S/M site that was eventually harassed out of existence by the US government. Filmmakers Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell get both the men in charge and the women we see caned and restrained on screen to reflect on insex’s modus operandi. Matters involving art, porn, transcendence and torture all come to the fore, as well as the power dynamics that inevitably complicated the supposedly “safe” context for the sex play. You probably haven’t seen anything like what goes on here and may never want to again.

http://www.eyeweekly.com/film/feature/article/59054

The first screening at Hot Docs was wonderful.
As I approached the theater and saw the long line all around the corner of the building, I was wondering if there was another film playing that night. But, no, they were all there for GSH.
Today I found out that there were 800 seats in there!
Q&A was interesting as always. People were very supportive and we even had our first couple of slightly more critical questions.
Today Brendan Canty, director of Ashes of American Flags, said he felt sorry for us when people were so aggressive, but he hasn't worked with PD for 5 years. This was not aggression to us, we had been expecting so much worse. I wonder if that will ever happen.

Anna

Spotlight on Female Filmmakers

NSEX is one of the most hardcore S&M sites on the web, with over 30,000 international subscribers. This doc takes you behind the scenes where founder, PD, cuffs the girls, spanks them, makes them bleed, simulates drowning them, twists their tits until they turn blue, buggers them with sticks, mummifies them with PVC and hangs them from the ceiling, pulls their nostrils back and pours hot sauce on their vaginas. Sounds fun, eh? The film documents interviews from a variety of the girls who work for PD and discuss their experiences, from being empowering to feeling like rape. Throughout the story, the FBI investigates PD and compares his work to that of serial rapists and murderers. At times Graphic Sexual Horror is visually beautiful and at other times it will make you feel like vomiting; certainly a film that evokes discussion surrounding sexual mores and the role of women in this particular genre of the sex industry. You will also question whether PD is just a kinky guy or a complete threat to society.

How were you first introduced to Insex and what was your initial reaction?

I started working for PD as a photographer, and was very shocked photoshopping images on my first day. But after the first shoot, I realized that it was just that, a shoot, not non-consensual torture.

What prompted you to make a documentary about Insex?

Barb and I wanted to do a project together and as she had been at the Insex studio several times she saw the potential. After completing the film I realized that I needed to process my experiences of working there.

Do you think what PD is doing is dangerous?

Except for the tank, the sets were tested and everything rehearsed. The physical danger was very much minimized. The psychological danger is about setting your own limits, something we should trust adults to do. Even if they are women.

What common thread did you discover with the women who actively participate in the S&M tapings?

Whether they were doing it for money or the experience, the vast majority were exhibitionists.

Do you find PD’s work to be beautiful or scary?

At the best it was beautiful, like a dance between him and the model.

What did you enjoy most about making this documentary?

How the story, and our perception of the story changed and deepened while editing. We had envisioned something completely different, a light hearted piece showing that these were just regular people in a not so regular work environment, with a lot of bizarre and comical things happening in the midst of the horrific-looking shoots. But the interviews we got were so great, people had processed their experience and matured from it in a way we were not expecting.

What was the most challenging aspect of making this documentary?

Focusing. We could have made a series of 10 episodes, had so much material, so many different aspects we could include.

In the process of Directing Graphic Sexual Horror, did you find yourself more open to sexual experimentation?

No. Actually the opposite.

Do you consider the women involved to be exploited?

Not in any other way then people without money or power are routinely exploited in capitalist societies.

What discourse do you hope Graphic Sexual Horror will provoke amongst audiences?

That everybody who has to work for money is always making a choice: What am I willing to do for this amount of money? Whether the industry is bondage porn or corporate fashion, (as an audience member at Slamdance remarked on the similarities.) And that the answer to why something is shocking or revolting lies within yourself.

http://www.shedoesthecity.com/special/hotdocs09/graphicsexualhorror.html