Located on Southwest Broadway a half-block south of Burnside,
Mary's Club is a Portland institution. Step inside the darkened,
cramped room and you enter a fantasy world of Polynesian murals,
smoky haze and blasting jukebox. Beautiful women dance across
the tiny, elevated stage, taking their clothes off for the
tips offered by beer-swilling patrons. At 36, Mary's Club
has been in business longer than most other establishments
along Broadway. And as one of more than 200 sex-related businesses
in the city, Mary's stands as the most enduring proof that
the No. 1 industry in the City of Roses is sex.
But there's more to Portland's sex industry than strippers
bumping and grinding across stages, videostore clerks renting
out the latest porno or prostitutes exchanging sex for money.
In the city that boasts more strip clubs per capita than
anywhere else in America, Portland is ground zero for a
subculture of artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers and
intellectuals that has emerged from the sex industry.
In a society that uses sex to sell almost everything, it
is bitterly ironic that the sale of sex itself is one of
its greatest taboos. The people who work within the sex
industry, especially the women, are often misunderstood
pariahs. Above all, sex industry workers are human beings,
no less complex than brain surgeons or politicians in their
motivations, and no less deserving of an opportunity to
tell their stories.
The second Sex by Sex Workers Film and Video Festival arrives
this week as proof of the complexity of the sex industry
and those involved. An equally important and entertaining
program of shorts and features, the festival provides an
opportunity to see the very human side of an industry shrouded
in taboo and sleaze.
The festival serves as a benefit for Danzine, a nonprofit
that provides sex workers with resources and information
about STD prevention and birth control, facilitates a needle-exchange
program and also produces the independent publication danzine.
Teresa Dulce, the driving force behind the organization,
co-founded the film festival with local Renaissance woman
Gina Velour in 1998. Since then, San Francisco has played
host to a very similar event, and a growing number of sex
workers have become filmmakers. This year's dynamic program
reflects the new subculture of artists, with an eclectic
mix of films ranging from shorts like Mother's Mink,
an exploration of a middle-class prostitute's relationship
with her mother's mink coat, to features like Live! Nude!
Girls! Unite!, which chronicles the efforts of exotic
dancers at San Francisco's Lusty Lady to unionize.
The 24 films and videos featured have the sex industry
in common, having been produced or directed by people who
work in the business or were inspired by the industry itself.
But don't let the name fool you: This is not cheap porno
meant for the trench-coat crowd. Dealing with the health
care of HIV-positive women in jail, Blind Eye to Justice
is far from an erotic stroke-fest. And while such documentaries
as Daddy, Make Me a Star and WADD: The Life and
Times of John C. Holmes deal directly with the porn
industry, their frank and revealing look at the sex business
is not likely to give anyone a boner or make anyone's panties
moist.
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 4
7 pm
The festival--which consists of nine separate screenings--kicks
off tonight with the short Outlaw Poverty, Not Pros,
a documentary of the 1989 World Whores Summit in San Francisco.
Also showing is the feature film Vice, a subversively
funny courtroom drama based on actual transcripts of a case
involving a stripper busted for indecent exposure in Houston,
where millions of dollars are spent annually to bust strippers
while murders routinely go unsolved.
8:45 pm
Gina Gold's short Do You Want Me to Stay? is a hilarious
look at what lap dancers endure to earn a living. Daddy,
Make Me a Star, co-produced by porn actress-turned-advocate
Sharon Mitchell, traces the hardcore industry from its early
days in the '70s to the late '90s. It's an unrepentant look
at an industry that started out with performers whose roots
were in the underground theater community but has degenerated
to anal gang bangs and people fucking on top of dead fish.
10:30 pm
A series of shorts made by Portland filmmakers will be
showing, including Not Even Ashamed, a personal documentary
about local exotic dancers produced by Junior Rose Festival
Queen-turned-stripper Queen Ruth E. The program also includes
works by Jacob Pander, Tonya Hurt, Ernest Truley and Dave
Queen.
Midnight
Cass Paley's film WADD: The Life and Times of John C.
Holmes is unforgettable. With a legendary penis that
measured in excess of 13 inches, John Holmes (a.k.a. Johnny
Wadd) is a pop-culture icon. WADD explores the life
of the legendary porn star--whose life inspired Boogie
Nights--with more unflinching brutality than any episode
of Behind the Music. Director-producer Paley paints
a chilling portrait of a charming sociopath who had a secret
wife no one knew about for 20 years, pimped his 15-year-old
mistress, screwed thousands of women (and some men), was
a prime suspect in the infamous Wonderland murders, and
who continued to fuck on film, despite the fact he had AIDS.
THURSDAY, OCT. 5
Noon
This program features an encore presentation of Do You
Want Me to Stay?, as well as Porn 101, an instructional
video produced by AIM Health Care Foundation that addresses
emotional and physical safety for women considering a career
in the sex industry. Sara McCool's Big Girls promises
to be the best of this program as Candy Kane, Scarlot Harlot
and other sex workers talk about the joys of being full-figured
women.
2 pm
More shorts, including Scarlot Harlot's Blind Eye to
Justice.
7 pm
Live! Nude! Girls! Unite! and Scarlot Harlot's Mother's
Mink.
8:45 pm
A double dose of legendary porn performer Annie Sprinkle,
starting with the short Zen Pussy. The documentary
Herstory of Porn then explores Sprinkle's career
and her involvement in the
sex industry.
10:30 pm
For those looking for something less thought-provoking
than the other films being screened, SeXXX: Talent Turns
It On should float your boat. This program, which contains
sexually graphic excerpts from films like Masturbation
Memoirs and Rim Fest, promises to deliver the
goods for those looking to keep their hands in their pockets.
Sex by Sex Workers Film and Video Festival
Cinema 21,
616 NW 21st Ave., 223-4515
Screenings at 7, 8:45, 10:30 and midnight Wednesday and
noon, 2, 7, 8:45 and 10:30 pm Thursday, Oct. 4 and 5.
Separate admission for each screening. $6 evenings, $5
with a can of food. $4 afternoons, $3 with can of food.
VIP all-access pass available for $50 at Reading Frenzy,
921 SW Oak St.
Opening Night Party, 7 pm Wednesday, Oct. 4, at the Gypsy
(across from Cinema 21). Free.
Sex Worker Symposium,
2-4 pm Thursday, Oct. 5, at Muu Muu's (next door to Cinema
21), featuring a discussion about the sex industry and filmmaking
with Sharon Mitchell, Scarlot Harlot and others. $20.
Live Show: 9 pm Thursday, Oct. 5, at Dante's (Southwest
Burnside Street and 3rd Avenue), with live performances
by Sharon Mitchell, Miss B. Haven, Viva Las Vegas, Disc
Jockey Gregarious and others. $10.
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