7:30 p.m.	Xperimental Eros Works by Peggy Ahwesh, Thomas Draschan and Stella Friedrichs, Lewis Klahr, Julia Ostertag, Oscar Perez, Mark Street, Tom Palazzolo, Jeff Krulik, Naomi Uman, J. X. Williams

San Francisco curator and filmmaker Noel Lawrence curated the compilation Xperimental Eros for release on DVD through Other Cinema Digital. Together with UC Berkeley Film Studies Professor Linda Williams and other experts in the field, he will discuss the genre boundaries between pornography and experimental film in a panel following the program.

Experimental films can show some of the same things that pornographic films show—soft- or hardcore sex, sometimes laced with violence. But they show it differently. This is the lesson of the works inspired by pornography in this program. Experimental cinema seems the opposite of the rigid genre restrictions of pornography: where pornography is formulaic and repetitious, repressing the imagination of its creators, experimental film surprises and innovates. Where pornography is the most crassly commercial of genres, experimental works are exempt from commercial exploitation. Where pornography wants to see clearly, experimental films often obscure and complicate. Finally, where porn has to deliver the goods of arousal, experimental films have no such obligation. Yet what draws me to the experimental is very often the same thing that draws me to pornography: the chance to see the human body—and not just the face!—in all its beauty and/or grotesqueness, caught up in either the most boring or the most ecstatic of states.

—Linda Williams

• King of Porn (Jeff Krulik, 1966, 7 mins, Video). Blue Movie (Mark Street, 1994, 5 mins, 16mm). Sneakin’ and Peakin’ (Tom Palazzolo, 1976, 15 mins, 16mm). removed (Naomi Uman, 1999, 6 mins, B&W, 16mm). The influence of ocular light perception on metabolism in man and in animal (Thomas Draschan, Stella Friedrichs, Austria, 2005, 6 mins, 16mm). Downs Are Feminine (Lewis Klahr, 1993, 9 mins, 16mm). The Color of Love (Peggy Ahwesh, 1994, 9 mins, 16mm). Sexjunkie (Julia Ostertag, Germany, 10 mins, Video). Pacifier (Oscar Perez, 1999, 10 mins, Beta SP). Plus a special surprise film by J. X. Williams.

• (Total running time: c. 90 mins plus panel discussion, From the artists, Canyon Cinema)