The 8th Biennial
San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival sponsored by
Desiree Alliance, ISWFACE, BAYSWAN and SWOP-USA/SWOP
Bay Area
Co-Producers: Erica Fabulous & Carol Leigh
AKA Scarlot Harlot;
Film Curator: Laure Mc Elroy; Performance Curators: Mariko Passion
and Tom Orr
Community
sponsors include : San Francisco Bay Times; San Francisco Bay Guardian;
National Queer Arts Festival; San Francisco Transgender Film Festival;
Media Alliance; St. James Infirmary; Good Vibrations; Sex Worker Media
Library; Center for Sex & Culture; Babes in Toyland; Vixen Creations;
Fatso; Dee Dee TV; Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc. |
8th
BIENNIAL SAN FRANCISCO SEX WORKERS FILM AND ARTS FESTIVAL
May
18th-26th 2013
Schedule
in progress: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/schedule2013.html
Since 1999 the San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Arts Festival has provided
a forum for sex worker film and video makers to screen works about sex
workers and sex work, businesses, industries and trades around the world.
The Festival has expanded to become a vibrant venue for performances,
workshops, visual arts, political organizing, skills sharing and ever
expanding events. The Sex Worker Festival recognizes and honors prostitutes,
dancers, porn performers and other sex workers from diverse communities,
who have been dynamic and integral members of arts communities since
time immemorial.
Performance and Parties
TheWhoreCast LIVE! Siouxsie Q brings sex
worker stories, art, and voices this time LIVE and in person to kick
off the Fest at the Center for Sex & Culture featuring Cinnamon Maxxine,
James Darling and Courtney Trouble.The WhoreCast Trivia game and lots
of surprises in this interactive live show.
Back
by popular demand, San Francisco's "Musical Comedy Cabaret Porn
Star" and award-winning lyricist Tom Orr presents Love For $ale
redux, "Hooker with a Heart of Gold" featuring music, burlesque,
and performance art via hooker showtunes in this a benefit for the St.
James Infirmary, the sex worker occupational health clinic in San Francisco.
Performance
curator and international multi-media artist Mariko Passion brings her
"Whorrific Popcorn Theater Bus and Cabaret," as storytellers
and performers including Ckiara Rose, Scarlot Harlot and Femme 6 take
riders on a magical adventure with a Happy Ending!
The
2013 Sex Worker Fest welcomes Amber
Dawn (author of Lambda Award-winning novel Sub
Rosa) launching her new work "How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustlers
Memoir" on Thursday, May 23rd at "Oral Sarvices," an evening
of spoken word with Brontez Purnell, Juba Kalamka, Rhiannon Argo, Ckiara
Rose, Lola Sunshine, Jacques La Femme, editors of Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos
in Her Own Words and participants from an MNRC workshop w/ POOR Magazine.
Special Events
The
Sex Worker Festival again presents "Whores
Bath," a spa and magical healing event for sex workers in San
Francisco, "reclaiming our roles as healers." "Whores
Bath," was created by Festival co-producer, Erica Fabulous,
who also launched "Roaming Hookerfest" "Privilege,
Opression and Intersextionality" workshops and much more. Her
long-time collaborations with San Francisco's diverse queer/trans/sex
worker underground has inspired yearly sex worker performance extravaganzas.
"Whores
Bath" contributes to the 21st century lexicon with a new entry in
the Urban Dictionary (www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whores%20bath)
Workshops
In
2013 the Festival launches a 4 day series of workshops, "Privilege, Oppression,
and InterseXionality," for sex workers and allies in conjunction with
Rhizome
Consulting Project. Join us for this transformative, heart and mind
opening workshop series as we deepen our awareness of class/race/gender
and how they overlap and intersect.
Amber Dawn will be
among those offering workshops on Friday on May 24th at the Center for
Sex & Culture. Amber Dawn's workshop"Tough Language and Tender
Wisdoms" is "sex workers only" but most including Mariko Passion,
The Incredible Edible Akynos, Charlie Fredericks "Housing Justice
& Sex Work" and more are open to all. Please check the schedule
TBA re: admission for each workshop.
The
Festival is proud to welcome activist and artist Emi Koyama. Focusing
on the carceral state, Koyama's recent zine, "State Violence, Sex
Trade, and the Failure of Anti-Trafficking Policies," is based on
extensive research, documenting of false premises within the U.S. domestic
anti-sex trafficking movement and the alignment with the fundamentalist
Christian right. The evening also includes a selection of video clips
from "Collateral Damage: Sex Workers and the Anti-Trafficking Campaigns,"
"Normal- Real Stories from The Sex Industry" and more.
Screenings
Films
and videos for the Festival focus on sex workers lives and rights; diverse
voices including youth, sex workers of color, migrant sex workers; sex
worker right organizations around the world; impact of trafficking policy
and discourse on sex workers;
new work from Asia Pacific Network of Sex Worker; sex work as a labor
issue on the international agenda; sex workers as artists; queer and
trans sex workers; sex worker saints, heros and sheros; sex work and
gender identities; sex education, sex art, porn, fetish culture and erotica;
portraits of strippers, prostitutes, doms, and madams, and much more.
The 2013 films show news turn in 'sex worker sinema.' Influenced by the
contemporary genre of gritty and intensley personal reality shows, "Lot
Lizard" and "American Courtesans" represent the best examples
of self-revelation. In "Lot Lizard" (aka truck stop sex workers)
hitchhiker, now filmmaker, Alexander Perlman presents intimate and unusually
respectful portraits that invokves a broader story about how America
deals with its outcasts. In "American Courtesans," long time
escort and filmmaker Kristen DiAngelo courageously wrestles with taboo
revelations about sex workers, violence and stigma. Remarkably candid
and sometimes self-critical, the women in this movie invite the viewers
into the circles of a suportive sisterhood to share in their trauma,
catharsis and ultimately their empowerment. Scarlet Road documents the
specialized work of Rachel Wotton, as she works with clients who are
disabled, campaigning for both sex worker rights and to increase awareness
and access to sexual expression for people with disability. In
"Pay it no Mind: The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson,"
the woman who thew "the shotglass that was heard around the world"
is memorialzied in this tribute to sex worker and LGBT history, screening
with "Remembering The Living: Monica Forrester on
Sister in Spirit and Indigenous Sex Workers." An array of brilliant
shorts include "A Kiss for Gabriela" by Laura Murray, "Whore
Logic" by PJ Starr featuring The Incredible Edible Akynos, "Stripper
Damage" by Gina Gold, "Transitioning
Through Sex Work" by Jay Very,
"Nada" by Nada Felini and Christian Vega,Creative Trafficking"
by Operation Snatch and many more.
.
Festival founder, Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot says, "Sex workers
have an excellent vantage point from which to view social hypocrisy,
expressed in many contexts--by the lawmakers who use their services,
then sponsor policies which further criminalize them, to the wanna-be
saviors who claim to 'rescue' but only increase our vulnerability. This
whores-eye-view of society is reflected in this body of work by sex workers."
The
Sex Worker
Festival is proud to include sponsors: the San Francisco Bay Times (www.sfbaytimes.com);
the San Francisco Bay Guardian (www.sfbg.com); the National Queer Arts
Festival (www.queerculturalcenter.org), the San Francisco Transgender
Film Festival (www.trannyfest.com); the Center for Sex & Culture
(www.sexandculture.org); Media Alliance (www.media-alliance.org); Sex
Worker Media Library (www.sexworkermedialibrary.org); International Sex
Worker Foundation for Art Culture and Education (www.iswface.org), Sex
Workers Outreach Project; Desiree Alliance; the St. James Infirmary (www.stjamesinfirmary.or);
Solace, San Francisco (www.solacesf.org); the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,
Inc.
Contacts:
Co-Producers- Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot and Erica Fabulous
Telephone: (415) 857-5425
email: swfest@bayswan.org, sexworkerfest@gmail.com
Dates: May 18th-26th 2013
Location: Multiple venues: Roxie Cinema; Center for Sex & Culture;
Agency Locations-St. James Infirmary; CAL-PEP.
Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com
Schedule:
http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/schedule2013.html
Tickets:TBA
Additional Curators: Film Curator- Laure McElroy; Performance curators:
Tom Orr and Mariko Passion
Media
Release and Materials-Updated regularly
Logos
at http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/webpics-logos.htm
Photos,
Movie Stills and Illustrations at: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/swfest2013/hi-res.htm
(www.thesisters.org)
and more.