CARNAL NATION

I met Amsterdam-based director Jennifer Lyon Bell in person this past February at a Sunday brunch at Monkey Town, a performance space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn where we were both screening our CineKink Film Festival award winners. Her Matinée had just garnered a Best Narrative Short prize while Un Piede di Roman Polanski, the homage to Roman Polanski's foot fetish I co-directed with Roxanne Kapista, had taken Best Experimental Short. So when I received word last month that Matinée had just been banned from the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (yes, the irony of the acronym did not escape me either) by the Australian Classification Board the week before it was set to screen, I knew I had to get in touch with Jennifer and find out the 411 on getting the bum's rush in the land down under.

Watching Matinée, which basically boils down to following real actors who rehearse a (staged) sex scene and then go onto a (fake) stage in front of a (fake) audience and have real sex, what was so subversive to me wasn't the sex but the critical commentary it offers with regards to all the simulated sex in mainstream movies. What is "real" and what is "fake" anyway when we're talking about a medium like film? Do you want to elaborate on this aspect?

I'm glad you noticed that! I'd like for my film to be a commentary not just on the culture's ridiculous and overwhelming insistence that sex be choreographed and simulated in mainstream film, but also on the touted "real" sex in porn that can be—in key ways—just as artificial. For example, if porn's physical penetration is real, but the pleasure is completely simulated, is that really "real" sex? Not to me.

The issue of "real" and "fake" is also very personal to me as an ex-(mainstream) theater actress. The emotions and sensations you feel when you're acting—depending on the theory of acting you adhere to—are just as "real" and physical as in your offstage life. If your character becomes enraged and then bursts into tears, that's real rage and those are real tears. If an actress's character gets slapped or simply drinks a glass of water, it's her own body that undergoes these experiences. Someone who claims that a professional actor or actress shouldn't perform a sexual act onstage (or in a film) because a professional would "act it, not do it for real" is someone who doesn't understand the craft of acting very well. I wanted to illustrate this issue in my film in a personal and visceral way.

So fill us in a bit on the controversy. I know the Classification Board is letting all unrated films at MUFF screen except Matinée due to its "sexual content." Have you been in touch with other filmmakers who've had problems with censorship of their work? If I remember correctly Comstock Films, which produces documentaries involving real couples having sex, also has had trouble in Australia in the past. (Maybe you guys can start the Banned From The Land Down Under Film Festival? Sorry Aussies.)

Ha! Yes, it's a strange system. The Australian Classification Board reviews the list of unrated festival films, and decides what rating the film would likely have received if it had been rated—but the Board doesn't need to actually view the film in full. They can use whatever materials they like to make their decision, including the photographs, a web search on the director, or information about the director's other films. I'll never know how much of Matinée they actually saw; for example, did they understand the plot of Matinée that you described? The compounding problem is that, unlike in many countries, films stamped with the X-equivalent rating in Australia are simply illegal to screen in any public venue, which isn't the case in the USA or Holland or Germany or in many other countries. So, for difficult-to-distribute challenging films that can normally only be seen at festivals, Australia's festivalgoers are left in the lurch.

You're absolutely right, Tony Comstock's films have had the same problem—in fact, twice at MUFF. He was the first person I called for advice when Matinée was banned. I've always felt a strong connection to Tony's films, because his explicit documentaries definitely challenge traditional film-genre boundaries the same way that I hope mine do. (Plus, I think his films are fascinating.) As a filmmaker and curator personally obsessed by the exciting overlap between sex and mainstream/art film, I definitely talk to other like-minded filmmakers about their challenges. There are lots of overlapping issues: Outright banning, being unfairly burdened with restrictive ratings, or being forced to excise everyday sexual acts (like power play, or female ejaculation in UK films) because, bizarrely, they are considered completely illegal to show. In the festival circuit, underground film festivals often bear the brunt of censorship issues, both because they generally embrace genre-crossing films, and because they dare to accept edgy films that make bigger festivals (particularly ones with mainstream corporate sponsors) nervous.

What has been the overall response? You said MUFF has formally protested the ban, and have sent out press releases in support of Matinée. Have others rallied to the cause? Is anything pushing the Classification Board to reconsider its stance?

MUFF was fantastic. They wrote a passionate open letter to the Board defending Matinée's artistic integrity, and then released the letter to the press. Shortly after the ban, I got an e-mail from MUFF's festival director letting me know that their jury awarded Matinée the prize for "Best Short Film," because they had really liked the film even though they hadn't been able to create a venue for the festivalgoing audience to see it. I was shocked and quite flattered.

The reaction from the film community was very positive, and I got a huge outpouring of international mail from filmmakers, feminist organizations, and the genre-bending erotic film community. But, as far as I know, the Board is not seriously re-considering their stance, and the other Australian film festival that Matinée had gotten into sheepishly informed me that they couldn't run my film after all. It sounds to me like Australia's film community is plenty aware that Australia's festival policy, general ratings policy, and exhibition policy are all restrictively conservative in a way that negatively impacts Australia's film culture.

You're an American expat in Amsterdam, the founder of Blue Artichoke Films, which according to your website is "a small group of film enthusiasts dedicated to making artistic, unusual erotic films that portray sexuality in an emotionally realistic way." What's the cultural climate like right now in Europe for I guess what used to be called "art porn"? It seems like artists outside the mainstream are forever doomed to struggle, with or without sexual content in their work. Has the web made things easier?

Europe is still more daring than America when it comes to sex in film. In part that's a longstanding cultural difference, and in part I think it's due to sharp financial and labor distinctions that the USA makes between porn and mainstream film. For example, actors must choose whether or not they want Screen Actors Guild membership, which doesn't apply to "porn" performers. In Europe, at least, these problems apply less often, which is great for me. Here in Amsterdam, it's still a struggle for me, but the general vibe—among regular people, and actors/actresses, and potential crew—is more accepting of sexuality in film.

The web definitely helps erotic filmmakers. But not in the way you'd think. I wish it opened a flood of distribution opportunities, and in a small way it has—I can distribute my own films online from my site, and I can release them selectively at high-quality online retailers—but that pales in comparison to our lack of access to the film industry architecture of experienced distributors and sales agents and marketers that would free us up to spend more time making films and less time DIY marketing. But where the web's helped me tremendously is with helping me communicate my mission about Blue Artichoke Films. I can explain why I'm making these films, how it fits in with my feminism, and what the production process will be like for actors and actresses. It helps everyone feel more knowledgeable and comfortable about what I'm offering, which is crucial in a genre-bending area like this.

It's ironic that Matinée has been banned from a mainstream fest while I've spent the last few months feeling like I've had to "out" my film to all the erotica festival programmers requesting a screener of Un Piede di Roman Polanski. ("You know this is a G-rated film, right?") The whole notion of genre, like sexuality, often strikes me as absurd. The world isn't flat, but it's fluid. What are your thoughts?

I'm so with you. Life experience defies classification. If you want to make a film that feels true to life, it's going to involve some paradox and some complexity and a certain amount of uniqueness. The entire film system—from festivals to distribution to the Netflix categories—requires single-word classification, and that's just weird.

I appreciate the fact that the more genre-crossing festivals like erotic film festivals, "fantastic" film festivals, and underground film festivals are all trying to find ways to let complexity flourish. At one erotic festival, they started with award categories like "straight" and "lesbian" and then over the years added switched to just a "short" and "feature" competition. When I was co-organizing an erotic festival in Amsterdam, I started using playful program names that allowed the films some freedom to span genre.

My own films are difficult to classify, not just as mainstream vs. porn, but also as gay/straight, explicit/nonexplicit, etc. My short film Headshot is incredibly sexual, but you see no shots below the main character's waist. It depicts a scene between a man and a woman, but you only ever see the man—and gay male audience members are awfully enthusiastic about the intimate portrayal of male arousal. It takes me a full sentence or two to describe each film. I don't mind the paradoxes, I like them because I think audience members end up seeing the film's sexuality with a fresh perspective.

In the end, I think letting the film industry and government separate sexuality from the rest of human experience is tragically misguided. Sex is a part of life, and an extremely common and extremely powerful one. Why must sex be a genre of its own?