Kat Marie Yoas sing-reading about her goddes/dominatrix experience.
Why do you watch porn, and what do you miss in mainstream porn? were the two questions that framed the Red Dawns XXX-Politics discussion/filmscreening at Istanbul Pride in june. Sex sold better there than in Ljubljana (where the porn screenings on this years festival were surprisingly empty) and the workshop had over thirty participants that willingly shared personal facts about masturbatory habits as well as conflicting thoughts and critics on the subject of so called independent porn. Coming from a queer-feminist festival in constant identity crisis ;), also this discussion soon came to circle about what exactly makes porn queer or feminist and how to deal with different feminist critics of mainstream pornography while letting your mind turn on "wrong" fantasies. The interpretation of the feminist intentions behind for example Jennifer Lyon Bell's Headshot where diametrically different. Somebody watched it as a feminist revenge-blow-job, humiliating the man by exposing him vulnerable on film, another as a revelation showing that the so battered male pleasure isn't the mysogynic core of porn at all – pleasure is good. One voice stated that there is absulutely nothing more feministic about Jennifer's remake of Andy Warhol's Blow job than the original at all, while somebody else pointed out that from a feminist point of view the prologue-epilogue showing the actors' mutual consent means everything. An intense and relevant discussion interrupted only by the films and Rüzgar running to turn the volume down in an attempt to hide our immoral intentions from the neighbours...
Revolutionary free love to Istanbul Pride from Red Dawns!
And Rüzgars photo-story is here.
Follow the festival hour by hour through the lence of RG Gözum and Jasmina Klančar! They're everywhere.
http://picasaweb.google.com/rggozum/RDECEZORE2009
Sophia Starmack: Here is my great-grandmother (also Sophia) with her "friend" at Atlantic City circa 1916. I asked my grandma for some family pictures a few years ago and this is one of the ones she gave me. She said, "The girls were dressing up and having a good time! It's so funny!"But I think we know what's really going on here. My great-grandmother Sophia later got married to an Irish man who sold liquor illegally during the 1930s and had to spend a lot of time hiding from the police. She had a sad life but she liked to dance and drink beer and was still building fences and climbing trees well into her 70's.
"It's absurd that somebody like me should open a feminist festival" - Svetlana Makarovič opened the feminist and queer festival Red dawns yesterday in Menza pri koritu, explaining why she absolutely doesn't want to be associated to feminism.
In a way it was a suiting opening of a festival that is representing so many conflicting views of the topics it wants to present.
Thank you for coming Svetlana!
More pictures can be seen on the rdece flickr.
Anna Ehrlemark
Today after a final logistic meeting to untie the last knots before the storm of festival guest next week, we spent all afternoon and evening printing foxes. Mateja says we are becoming professional! All the fox eyes in the right place! Next year - inshallah - we'll have our new silk screen printing studio equipped and ready to fulfill our tehnicolor dreams...
The t-shirts will be on sale during the festival, but if you have your own shirt you would like to crown with a fox, you can come by for the second round on monday afternoon, in (A)-infoshop.
Anna Ehrlemark
