From 2000 until now, I’ve been a prolific videographer of Freak Culture: burlesque, circus, fire, dance, and extreme fetish performers. These artists inspired me to create a narrative based on my own experience in a fetish subculture. In other words, I wanted to turn the camera on myself.
As far as my media influences, I was a film studies major at Columbia University and I was particularly attracted to the work of Carl Dreyer (Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr) and the German Expressionists. The films featured a lot of subjective explorations of torture and violent sexual imagery. The more modern filmmakers Kubrick, Cronenberg, and Lynch, devote themselves to these themes. Cronenberg’s Videodrome was especially intriguing — the character Nikki Brand is absolutely driven to experience the furthest fringes of masochism. Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Inland Empire were terrifying and fascinating looks into the nature of power exchange, manipulation, and fetishism.
But I found realistic portrayals of kink in non-pornographic film a bit troubling. Even the best examples draw problematic correlations. Secretary, while nailing the pleasures of being a bottom, associates masochism and self-mutiliation and strays into the surreal. Quills identifies the kinky with the crazy. A Dangerous Method corrupts the relationship between teacher and student. However, these films contain stunning examples of how intertwining sex and pain can be intensely erotic and enjoyable — even theraputic.
Oddly enough, the bright shining examples of sex-positive kink have appeared in bizarre places. Sick – The Life And Death Of Super Masochist Bob Flanagan is a documentary of how a man with cystic fibrosis is able to reclaim control of his life and is sexuality through extreme acts of masochisism, at his own hands and at those of others. Henry and June honestly may be the best existing example of self-conscious and sensitive exploration of this subject matter.
All of these films influenced me heavily.