FILTH! Enter and Expand the Annals of Queer Film
| Date | 05.02.25 |
| Doors | 7:00pm |
| Time | 8pm–10pm |
| Format | |
| Admission | Donation |
| Event artist | |
| Presented by | |
| Sponsored by |
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About FILTH!
Placing together queer history and queer presence in Cinema, we ask you to enter and expand the annals of Queer Film. With this series, which originally ran in Chicago in 2023, we showcase queer erotica past and present, centralizing queer desire to remind us of our histories. With mainstream focus on acceptance, we run the risk of sanitizing queerness. Erotica, or PORN, has been a beacon for queer movie makers and lovers for generations. The porn theater boom in the 60s and 70s provided not just a place for queer gaze and desire on screen, but community spots for pleasuring each other. With growing access to movie making materials, we see a turn in queer history to the video store… into the backroom. Now with a near complete loss of those physical queer spaces, but equipped with cameras/computers in our pockets and generations of documented queer history to teach us about our own Desires and Pleasures, where do we go?
This is our proposal to you, but let us warn you… its FILTHY!
CONTENT WARNING: This event is 18+ and includes themes of: sexual liberation, intimacy, the Universe, fucking, and the nature within us all. This sometimes, but does not always, include visual or audio material that could be labeled "pornographic".
Films Screening
Hole Theory - Mahx Capacity (they/them) - AORTA films
“The hole is not the entry nor the exit--it is the infinite interior, the space which cannot be Seen, only Felt.”
Hole expert Ashely Paige (she/her) and expert hole Corey More (they/them) star in this visceral meditation on the gloriousness of holes. With interdimensional illustrations by Oona Taper and sound design by Paleo Pony aka Jonah Rosenberg, Hole Theory explores the cosmic unknowability of that which engulfs. “Holes are the original time travel. You come out more yourself than you were when you entered: rearranged, holy, new. Holes make you whole.” Trust us. We know holes.
Crawl With Me - Nixie Mae (he/him) - Berlin
A short film shot with Ian Munro and Luke Davis in the abandoned logging forest of Ballybawn, Ireland. Nixie Maefly's video work explores trance states that induce abjection, jouissance, and BDSM in the natural world. He is based in Berlin, Germany and looking to cast for upcoming erotic queer films.
IS THIS LIBERATION? - M.O. Guzman (they/them) - Milwaukee
A conversation about lusting after Jesus. A desperate cry to the Holy Mother. Songs about God and destroying the world. Drug induced erotic fantasies of Mothman. Is this the way? Is that the light?
Fantasy + - sweatmother (he/they) - London
fantasy+ examines humans natural animalistic tendencies
The Multiverse in a Mouthfuck - Jorge The Obscene (he/him) - Chile
A metaphysical trip of self-awareness, from the seven principles of Hermeticism to the seven keys to master our lives. (Inspired by true fuckts)
PLUS!! XXX clips from The Vault
About SEEN
Since our inception we have worked with many community driven and alternative Art spaces. Started in Milwaukee, WI at downtown gallery with a decolonial focus We are, and have always been, a donation centered operation that focuses on self-defined, non-conformist queer work in the underground. Originally with an additional Scene (as in a sequence in a film) we rebranded in 2021 as the SEEN you know today and released the following manifesto.
what does it mean to be SEEN?
??
??????
we REJECT
the standardized SYSTEM of IMAGES
the pacification of the marginalized through the notion of REPRESENTATION as path to LIBERATION
the EXPLOITATION of makers through PAYWALLS, REGULATIONS, and CONFORMITY
and the CENSORSHIP of QUEERNESS and SEXuality
we WELCOME the rise of the cinematic GAZE GAYZ through SELF DEFINED spaces
we are not MONOLITHS
we are not COMPARTMENTALIZED
we are not clear cut NARRATIVES
we do not have to EXPLAIN ourselves to fit within the LENS of cishet white supremacist patriarchal STRUCTURES nor do we need VALIDATION from them for the ways we choose to DEFINE ourselves
we CHALLENGE the passivity of SPECTATORSHIP
we have been taught how to VIEW but we ask you to SEE
we RECOGNIZE moving image as a new VERNACULAR
full of SYMBOLS and CODE, intonations through many LENSES
we PROJECT the light of QUEER DISCOVERY so that we may ABSORB the refractions of knowledge from those before us and ILLUMINATE the path for those to come
we are not just an EVENT
nor are we FETISHES, TOKENS, or SPECTACLES
we are a COALITION to build the foundation for
THE RISE OF THE CINEMATIC GAZE GAYZ
there is so much STRUGGLE and POWER at play in the arena of MEANING
