Frameline Film Festival: Dirt and Desire 

The program of shorts entitled Dirt and Desire takes you on a sexy, sex-positive, and ultimately queer adventure through the imaginations and blissfully dirty minds of nine filmmakers. They explore a variety of sexual desires and preference, promising no one will be turned away!

Starting off with Kat-I's Sex Toy Stories, we enjoy watching as she interviews people about the sexy relationships they have with their sex toys. It is sure to include some old favorites as well as perhaps some new ideas for exploration! Sex swings anyone?

Next, we move to Getting Off, in which directors J Aguilar and Meliza Banales take us on a hilarious journey of a San Francisco boi that is searching for his missing orgasm. Throughout the film we see a delicious array of queer bodies that would suit all palettes, ultimately providing a sex-positive look into an idealistic queer community, dubbed Queer City. But have no fear. This wild ride through alleyways, clubs, and boudoirs ends with everyone finally getting it off (and we're guaranteed that no orgasms were hurt in the making of this film) because the old saying proves true: Once was lost, but now am found!

In the short stop motion animation The Leather Daddy and the Unicorn, filmmaker Samara Halperin gives a nod to the popular animation style of shows like Robot Chicken by utilizing action figures and simple stop motion animation techniques to a short, simple narrative in which our leather daddy is suggestively penetrated by the horns of several unicorns. Although it runs only two minutes, we quickly tire of the juvenile joke as well as the epilepsy inducing five second strobing neon purple screen, which randomly manifests itself throughout. No clear message can be deduced and the point seems to be the punchline, which we get one-quarter of the way in. All in all is an amusing romp of what happens when leather and horns unite in shared curiosity and passion. Promise you won't see any of this at Folsom ... well maybe we shouldn't go that far.

Next is a project by Shifting Narratives, which is a community of filmmakers that use the short narrative format to challenge societal assumptions and traditional notions of people that live on the margins of the mainstream. Filmmaker Stephanie Yang presents New Bike, a short film that reflects upon the connection between memory and desire in a story about a young woman's search for her dream bike. That is directly linked to the loss of a childhood bike. Through this dreamy, black and white narrative we see the connection between the memory of the lost bike manifest as contemporary desire in the form of an interaction with an attractive, hipster girl.

The Apple is a beautiful and artistic peep-showesque portrayal from French filmmaker Jouvet Emilie, where we witness an intimate glimpse of a tattooed Eve awaking in Paradise and discovering desire with the famous, sinful apple. We see Eve struggle with the decision to bite the apple as she is tempted by temptation itself. Ultimately, we are treated to an erotic show of Eve succumbing to the forbidden ... fruit. The film was a beatific mixture of burlesque and fetish that shines a new perspective on the old parable.

Janice Perry's film Lez Porn: Pleasure and Danger follows as an examination of mixing the pleasurable aspects of craftsmanship with the inherent danger of working with power tools. As we watch a pair of powerful lesbian hands beautifully craft woodwork, we reflect upon how skill and competence can be sensual and sweet.

The program's namesake, Dirt and Desire, is a German short by Diane Busuttil that is shot in black and white and stars a demure girl who invites a seductress over for a dinner of homemade potatoes, but her plans of an intimate dinner are foiled as her home is infiltrated by a bawdy, vodka swilling band of potato crazed vagabonds. We watch as the mistress of the house slaves in steamy kitchen, preparing a potato feast to the interlopers. While they eat, drink, and prostrate themselves in mounds of mashed and boiled potatoes, we find the heroine has departed to the bedroom on a much darker feast, as she herself is devoured by a pair of hot and mysterious suitors. But, Busuttil reassures us, "those who eat potatoes live forever."

In the short, What I Found in Great Aunt Nell's Closet, a young adult looks through a keyhole at animated puppet-esque depictions of various, antiquated lesbian interactions, assumed to be the exploits of the Great Aunt. The film is a playfully animated machinima piece, which deals with the perception of the elderly and of past generations as uniformly straight and sexless. It leads us to wonder what our elders may be hiding in their closets. Perhaps they aren't as passionless as we think.

We conclude the program with Tour de Pants, a film by Luke Woodward, in which a multi-gendered, all queer cast petal their way to the finish line in hopes of winning the grand prize, the Golden Panties. This crazy bicycle race promises not to be like any race you can watch on ESPN, as sexual exploits along the way distract many. At forty minutes, this was the longest film in the set, by far; and through the binding narrative of the bicycle race we experience various sexual encounters between the contestants. In one scene we watch voyeuristically as one guy "suits up" his bike for a different kind of ride, after which he exclaims, "it's not about winning the race, it's about how you get there." We see several sexy scenes featuring queer couples all in bike related mishaps, which divert their attention from the race and onto each other. The film features two orgy scenes, in one of which we follow the misadventures of a ruffled, pink princess who is tied up and "gang raped" by a queer, femme, group of glitter smeared "bad girls." But I promise no one was complaining! All in all, we find the "misfortunes" experienced by this diverse cast to be sexy and hilarious, and by the orgy-tastic end no one was left high nor dry!

NSRC reviewed films from the 33rd annual Frameline Frameline's San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival through a partnership agreement with Frameline Films. For more information on this or other Frameline films, please contact Frameline Distribution.

Marik Xavier-Brier is a Masters candidate in the Sexuality Studies Department at San Francisco State University where he researches identity and sexuality in virtual worlds. His current research interests include the construction of gay identities, sexual interaction, and sexual citizenship within virtual environments. He is an avid online gamer and has been a resident of Second Life since 2006.