Red Light Revolution 红灯梦 (M18)
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011, 5.30pm
ONE SCREENING ONLY

Following a successful box office at the 2011 Singapore International Film Festival, Sinema brings you an encore of Red Light Revolution. Let’s take a humourous look at Chinese tradition colliding with modern sexual values. It is the story of an ordinary Beijinger who opens an adult shop to make ends meet, sparking a sexual revolution in his conservative neighborhood.

Directed by Sam Voutas
China | Mockumentary | 2010 | 91 mins | Mandarin with English subtitles | M18

Shunzi, like many men of his generation, is a hard worker who simply can’t afford to provide the type of life his spouse desires. When he is fired from his cab company, his wife promptly leaves him and throws him out of the house he bought her. With nowhere else to go, Shunzi returns to his parents’ traditional courtyard home for solace. As money pressures rise, Shunzi’s parents urge him to forget about “face” and take any job that will have him. So, unbeknownst to his family, Shunzi decides to step behind China’s new “red curtain” and secretly open an adult shop.

But when the neighborhood watch discovers that Shunzi has been operating without a permit, Shunzi faces the threat of losing everything. Shunzi and his neighbours have a choice: accept defeat, or fight for the shop that has unexpectedly united the community.

Selected Press Articles:

The Hollywood Reporter
CNN
Time Out Shanghai

Selected Film Festivals:

Tallgrass Film Festival – October 21, 2011

Comedy Cluj International Film Festival, Romania – October 17, 2011
NOMINATED: Best Film

Friars Club Comedy Film Festival – October 16, 2011
WINNER – Jury Award, Best International Feature

Kansas International Film Festival – October 4, 2011

Newport Beach International Film Festival – May 3, 2011

Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival – May 4, 2011

Orgasm Inc.
Producer/ Director/Editor/Camera: Liz Canner
USA | Documentary | 2009 | 78 mins | English | R21
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2011, 5.30pm
ONE SCREENING ONLY.
**Free Workshop Talk on 10 Dec 4.00pm to 5.00pm. RSVP required.

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In the shocking and hilarious documentary Orgasm Inc., filmmaker Liz Canner takes a job editing erotic videos for a drug trial for a pharmaceutical company. Her employer is developing what they hope will be the first Viagra drug for women that wins FDA approval to treat a new disease: Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD). Liz gains permission to film the company for her own documentary. Initially, she plans to create a movie about science and pleasure but she soon begins to suspect that her employer, along with a cadre of other medical companies, might be trying to take advantage of women (and potentially endanger their health) in pursuit of billion dollar profits. Orgasm Inc. is a powerful look inside the medical industry and the marketing campaigns that are literally and figuratively reshaping our everyday lives around health, illness, desire — and that ultimate moment: orgasm.

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QUOTES

“Orgasm Inc. is a terrific new documentary that delves into designer vaginas and other true life tales of the commodification of women’s pleasure centers.” -JoAnn Wypijewski, The Nation Magazine

“Orgasm Inc. is one of the best documentaries on both sex and the medical field ever, witty, clever, informative and timely.” -Firedoglake.com

“Named one of 2009′s Noteworthy Documentaries” -Dox Magazine, European Documentary Network

“Orgasm Inc. hits female erogenous zones that pharmaceutical fixes can’t find: your brain and your funny bone. ” – In These Times

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DIRECTOR’S NOTE

After over a decade of producing documentaries on human rights issues such as genocide, police brutality, and world poverty, the violent images from my movies were giving me nightmares and making me depressed about the state of humanity. In order to change the script in my head, I decided my next project would be about pleasure, specifically, the science of female pleasure.

Then, strangely, while I was in the middle of shooting the movie, I was offered a job editing erotic videos for a pharmaceutical company that was developing an orgasm cream for women. The videos were to be watched by women during the clinical trial of their new drug. I accepted the job and gained permission to film my employers for my own documentary. I thought the experience would give me access to the secretive world of the pharmaceutical industry and insight into the latest scientific thinking about women and pleasure.

I did not set out to create an exposé, but what I uncovered at work compelled me to keep filming and investigating. This insider perspective allows the film to scrutinize the everyday patterns of pharmaceutical company work in order to explore a culture that has been perverted to place the drive for profit above our health. So much for pleasure…

Calls for social change have been with us over the centuries; it is seen in history’s peasant uprisings, revolutions, suffragette demonstrations and freedom marches around the globe.

Indonesia has witnessed its fair share of demands for social change, from the rise in the late 1920s calling for the yoke of Dutch domination to be lifted to the dismantling of a dictatorial regime in 1998.

Getting the message of social change out in the past was word of mouth, written in subversive pamphlets or as in Indonesia, through village wayang (puppetry performances) delivering information of a people’s revolution under the noses of the Dutch colonists.

Last week’s inaugural Global Social Change Film Festival and Institute’s (GSCFFI) event in Ubud, Bali, continued this tradition of sharing information and raising conscious, but this time through the power of film that can reach millions of people around the world.

Read the full story here >>

via The Jakarta Post

In the documentary “Bachelor Mountain,” San Liangzi is a middle-age, divorced logger living in China’s snowy northeast province of Heilongjiang.

Excessive logging and toughening environmental regulations have pushed the local economy to the edge, and many of the inhabitants — especially the women — have long since moved to the city for work.

“Any old loser can find a man here,” says one of the female villagers interviewed. “Most women move to the city. They don’t want to live here in the sticks. We’d all leave if we could.”

Mr. San works occasional odd jobs, and he pines for one of the few single women in town. Wang Meizi — attractive but masculine—lives with her parents and runs an inn. Mr. San has carried a torch for her for years, but she has no interest in marriage. “We all know she’s a lesbian,” Mr. San’s friends tell him in an effort to get him to move on, but he brushes them off with a wave of his hand.

Read the full story here >>

via The Wall Street Journal

The BBC stands accused of being ‘a cheerleader for assisted suicide’ after filming a man killing himself at the notorious Dignitas clinic for a controversial documentary.

Sir Terry Pratchett, a prominent supporter of euthanasia, presents the programme which follows a man in the late stages of motor neurone disease as he travels from Britain to the Swiss clinic.

The popular fantasy novelist – who himself has Alzheimer’s – remains at the 71-year-old’s bedside until he succumbs to the cocktail of drugs he has taken to end his life.

Screening the moment of a suicide victim’s death is a first for terrestrial television.

Read the full story here >>

via Mail Online