James Baldwin: From Another Place
★ 6.5 · 1973 · 12m · Documentary
In Istanbul, American writer James Baldwin muses about race, the American fascination with sexuality, insights into his interrupted writing decade in the country, the generosity of the Turks, and how being in another country, in another place, forces one to re-examine well-established attitudes about modern society.
More Like This
Ôrí
1989 · ★ 8.6
A look at the Brazilian black movement between 1977 and 1988, going by the relationship between Brazil and Africa.
More info →
This Film Is Not Yet Rated
2006 · ★ 7.1
Kirby Dick's provocative documentary investigates the secretive and inconsistent process by which the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rates films, revealing the organization's underhanded efforts to control culture. Dick questions whether certain studios get preferential treatment and exposes the discrepancies in how the MPAA views sex and violence.
More info →
Preschool to Prison
2023
Preschool to Prison is a compelling examination of how the United States public school system is built and operated like prisons. Zero-tolerance policies are used to justify suspension and arrests that set up a pathway to send children of color and children with special needs from school to prison. Children are being suspended, restrained, dragged, physically manhandled, and subsequently arrested for minor offenses such as throwing candy on a school bus. These personal accounts from people affected by the school-to-prison pipeline give riveting tales about the generational impact on society.
More info →
Subjects of Desire
2021 · ★ 6
Subjects of Desire is a thought provoking film that examines the cultural shift in beauty standards towards embracing (or appropriating) Black aesthetics and features, deconstructing what we understand about race and the power behind beauty.
More info →
I'm a Porn Star: Gay 4 Pay
2016 · ★ 6.9
Welcome to the curious, surprising and always outspoken world of straight men who go Gay4Pay. Curiously, there is a disproportionate percentage of men working in gay porn who identify as straight. Why would a straight man do gay porn? What motivates him to try this or make a career of it? Why is there such keen interest and debate into the sexuality and personal lives of these men? And what does it say about us, the viewer that so much of gay porn is dominated by images of straight men?
More info →Everything I Thought I Knew About Sex
2022
A series of testimonies about formative encounters with sex and pornography.
More info →
Vibrations
2025 · ★ 10
In an intimate and provocative journey, Vibrations is a documentary-essay that explores the filmmaker’s complex relationship with explicit imagery and his own sexuality. Born into a Catholic family and struggling to put his homosexuality into words, the director finds in pornography a space for self-exploration and acceptance. The film dives into the nuances of alternative pornography, challenging stigmas and revealing how desire, identity, and the politics of the body intertwine both on screen and in life. A work that pulses between the personal and the universal, Vibrations challenges perceptions and invites a rediscovery of pleasure and freedom through the image.
More info →
Masters of the Pillow
2003 · ★ 9
Traces the making of UC-Davis professor Darrell Hamamoto's first-ever Asian American porn movie ("Skin on Skin") from planning to production. Hou interviews filmmakers Justin Lin ("Better Luck Tomorrow") and Eric Byler ("Charlotte Sometimes"), professor Elaine Kim and playwright David Henry Hwang to get at whether Asian America truly needs its own "porno practices" as a way of decolonizing the community's collective sexual imaginations and confronting how sexuality and masculinity are treated in the Asian American community.
More info →
Psychotherapy
2022
An interesting talk with Dr. Eusebio Rubio-Aurioles, about the current state of psychotherapy.
More info →
The Last Apostle: Journies in the Holy Land
2020 · ★ 8.5
Dr. Mark Fairchild, world-renowned archaeologist, traces the hidden years of Saint Paul's life in the mountainous Turkish countryside of Rough Cilicia.
More info →
Bodysong
2003 · ★ 5.6
Documentary footage from various sources, set to music. Showing the whole of human life, from birth to death and beyond.
More info →
The Perfumed Garden
2000
THE PERFUMED GARDEN is an exploration of the myths and realities of sensuality and sexuality in Arab society, a world of taboos and of erotic literature. Through interviews with men and women of all ages, classes, and sexual orientation, the film lifts a corner of the veil that usually shrouds discussion of this subject in the Arab world. Made by an Algerian-French woman director, the film begins by looking at the record of a more permissive history, and ends with the experiences of contemporary lovers from mixed backgrounds. It examines the personal issues raised by the desire for pleasure, amidst societal pressures for chastity and virginity. The film discusses pre-marital sex, courtship and marriage, familial pressures, private vs. public spaces, social taboos (and the desire to break them), and issues of language.
More info →