Single screening / Slovenian Premiere:
Center for Urban Culture
Kino Šiška, Trg Prekomorskih brigad 3, Ljubljana
Ticket price: 5 €/ 3 €(presale)
Trailer: Single screening / Slovenian Premiere:
Kino Šiška,
Trg Prekomorskih brigad 3, Ljubljana
Friday, 13 January 2017 at 8.00 pm
Ticket price: 5 € / 3 € (presale)
“Pornography is vital to freedom and a free and civilised society should be judged by its willingness to accept it.” — Salman Rushdie
Porn to Be Free is a film documentary about the generation who fought against puritanism and censorship to defend freedom of speech and sexual freedom. From Italy, Denmark and France through to California, the film follows a group of rebels who started a battle against censorship through pornography. Together they shook the church, the politics and the institutions. Through uncensored exclusive footage and archive material, the film explores the story and the fights of a group of pioneers: from film director and porn pioneer, Lasse Braun, to Riccardo Schicchi, master of transgression such as the election of porn star Cicciolina in the Italian Parliament. The documentary features numerous other protagonists such as feminist porn director Giuliana Gamba, author Lidia Ravera and a short animation by Charlie Hebdo’s veteran Siné. Through their utopia and shocking dreams, they made the world a freer place and paved the way for forward-thinking debates today, such as neo-feminism, or the LGBT rights movement.
Porn to Be Free is an opportunity to reflect on a period of great changes and transformations in which pornography, with its deconsecrating power, became a means of struggle and liberation and grew into a true language: from literature to cinema, from comics to visual arts. Writers, intellectuals, philosophers, feminists, pornographers and porn stars reveal to us how pornography was a means of change and a weapon of social and political struggle, putting Italy at the forefront of one of the most important and pervasive phenomena of contemporary culture, so much so to make turn pale even Larry Flynt and Linda Lovelace from overseas.
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
The film is shot in different formats — from Iphone to Canon C300 — and features dozens of interviews and unseen archive materials ranging across different eras aEnd different technologies — 35mm, private and amateur super 8, hundreds of photographs and sound recordings — the fruit of over two and a half years of research.
Looking at the normalized porn industry today, it appears that we have shifted back in time when opinion and rights movements rised up slightly but can’t break through moralism. We are almost inclined to say that we are lacking of a new Riccardo Schicchi or a new Ilona Staller, with the ingenuity and genuineness, the abstraction and the folly to make inroads into an increasingly monolithic society.
The film has been made and financed in an entirely independent way. No institution, public or private body has agreed to finance the project. The word “porn” in the title was enough to stop any support for production or distribution.
CREDITS
Written and Directed by Carmine Amoroso
Cinematography: Paolo Ferrari (aic-imago)
Produced by Patrizia Zoratti, Carmine Amoroso, Paolo Ferrari, Patrizio La Bella
Associate producer: Francesco Costabile
Editing: Luca Manes, Fabio Nunziata
Music: Fabrizio Fornaci
Sound: Alessio Costantino, Angelo Galeano, Paolo Testa
Sound editor: Stefano Di Fiore
With Riccardo Schicchi, Lasse Braun, Ilona Staller, Judith Malina, Giuliana Gamba, Lidia Ravera, Marco Pannella, Helena Velena, Marco Giusti, Achille Bonito Oliva
Visual Effects: Vincenzo di Natale
Colorist: Emanuele Pasquet
Production Management: Martina Spadano
Production: ZutFilm
In collaboration with Dana Stable and Patroclo Film
International distribution: WideHouse
CONTACT:
Urša Purkart, 00386-(0)31 568 737, aksioma.org@gmail.com
Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
Jakopičeva 11, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
