6th San Francisco Sex Worker Film, Art and Music Festival
Festival dates: May 30th to June 7th, 2009
Website: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/
Tel: 415-751-1659 Email: swfest [at] bayswan [dot] org
Schedule Updates: http://www.sexworkerfest.com/schedule2009.html
We are very excited to announce the 2009 San Francisco Sex Worker Film, Arts and Music Festival. This is the 10th anniversary, and 6th Biennial Festival! This year we focus on documentaries, sex worker portraits and activist shorts. The 2009 movies represent new trends in sex worker cinema, the intimate focus on individual sex workers with a new respect for their courage in the face of hazards of the work and escalating repression. New activist shorts also mark a current trend including the "how-to," safety education for sex workers, and unabashed, playful and celebratory sex worker rights propaganda.
The 2009 Sex Worker Fest will be presented in tandem with the Queer Cultural Festival http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/. The 2009 Fest includes a week of fun, sexy, political, kinky, naughty, bold and educational events. Events include: Saturday. May 30th- A Radar benefit hosted by Michelle Tea with Dorothy Allison, Kirk Read and more; Sunday, May 31st- Two events-An All Day Shopping Orgy/ Kinky Gifts, Sex Worker Crafts Show and Garage Sale at Center for Sex & Culture featuring entertainment including Ckiara Rose reading from "Song of Men Slaves"; May 31st late night party at Diva's sponsored by Sex Workers Outreach Project with Madam Zoe Von Presscott and TS Lady Megan Louanna; Monday, June 1st, Sex Workers Outreach Project Hospitality Day and Roundtable for sex workers and allies; Tuesday, June 2nd Whore-A-Palooza at El Rio with sex worker musicians including Mariko Passion featuring Mistress of Ceremonies, Annie Danger; Wednesday and Thursday, June 3rd and 4th, Army of Lovers, performances by male sex workers curated by Kirk Read at Center For Sex & Culture; Two events on Friday June 5th -Movies at Artists’ Television Access 7-10 PM; Late night- June 5th Cirque X" at Paradise Lounge benefit for St. James Infirmary, 10 year anniversary, a carnival of decadence with amazing fire troops and aerial acrobatics to sexy burlesque shows, exotic dancers, XXX porn stars, drag queens and fierce DJs! 9pm-3am; June 6th features movies at the Roxie and June 7th Intersections: Krip Sex! Krip Sex Work! at Ninth Street Media Center. The Sex Worker Fest introduces work from artists including cartoons by Modern Hooker www.modernhooker.com.
June 5th and June 6th Movies include local and international premieres including Death of a Whore, a Spanish-language biography of Grisélidis Réal, whose re-burial caused a recent international scandal (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/09/prostitute-griselidis-rea_n_173212.html); "Happy Endings" with interviews from Korean massage parlor workers in Rhode Island as they are confronted with the racism and zenophobia of local anti-prostitution activists; Science Friction with "Cinema of Desire" in this portrait of a trans sex worker from Thailand; "You're Welcome," a tender and humorous story of 'the whore next door' from Norway; a panel and international feature about sexual services for disabled clients; sex worker activist produced short docs and experimental work include "Flipping the Lens: A Look at $pread Magazine," and "Know Your Rights" from Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) Chicago; experimental shorts from Renegade Evolution and music videos from Scarlot Harlot; plus clips from your neighbors' home grown porn including kink/SM/BD/fetish/sex ed from San Francisco with stars including Madison Young in "Bride of Sin."
Curators and hosts include Scarlot Harlot, Kirk Read, Laure McElroy, Luna Pantera, Ckiara Rose, Annie Danger, Madeline Lowe, Madam Zoe Von Presscott, TS Lady Megan Louanna and Mariko Passion. Sponsors include the National Queer Arts Festival http://www.queerculturalcenter.org, Trannyfest http://www.trannyfest.com, International Sex Worker Foundation for Art Culture and Education http://www.iswface.org, the St. James Infirmary http://www.stjamesinfirmary.org, Breaking The Silence Film and Arts Festival, BAYSWAN http://www.bayswan.org, The Center for Sex & Culture http://www.sexandculture.org, SWOP-USA http://www.swopusa, Good Vibrations, http://www.goodvibes.com, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Kink.com and others to be announced!
For further information, including sponsorship opportunities, email swfest [at] bayswan [dot] org
Sex worker musicians, please contact: mariko [dot] passion [at] gmail [dot] com
Male sex worker artists, contact Kirk for the Army of Lovers show. mswfestival [at] gmail [dot] com
Today the Rhode Island House of Reps
will vote on a law that seeks to end private, indoor, sex-for-money
trades in Rhode Island. I don’t think I have to guess if the Governor
will sign this one, since it’s practically his only long-awaited
opportunity to strangle your reproductive organs with his rosaries. To-date, Rhode Island has had strict laws prohibiting on-street prostitutioni, but indoor arrangements and escorts are perfectly legal, and Rhode Island consequently enjoys a 33% lower per-capita rate of female imprisonment than the national average.
I won’t deny that the industry here is dangerously unregulated, and
that could use some fixing, but I don’t see how adopting the same
policy of prohibition that has failed in 48 other states
will improve our situation at all. We should re-regulate the industry
and set guidelines for parlor owners that force them to register
employees, subject them to random regular inspections, and make sure
that their employees are privately interviewed off-site annually to
make sure they’re working willfully. Also, we should tax the crap out
of the parlors. This law makes it impossible to regulate or
tax the industry, and virtually guarantees that the trade will move
farther underground, where trafficking, slavery, abuse, and pimping are
even more rampant.
This law will not only create an outdoor prostitutioni/pimp
problem (since the market for that is currently undercut by the parlors
and independent escorts), it will cost Rhode Island taxpayers anywhere between $7M
and $30M annually to enforce, not including judicial overhead or the
cost of expanding the womens’ prison. There is also the issue of tens of millions in out-of-state revenue loss, since many people travel to Rhode Island to engage legally in sex-for-money. sex industry also brings tens of millions of dollars from Massachusetts and Connecticut to Rhode Island, whose economy has been in bad shape since well before the financial collapse of 2008.
Call or email your rep today
and let them know that they should reject this legislation until a
comprehensive study of the sex industry in Rhode Island is presented,
including employment and economic factors.
All of Rhode Island’s neighboring states are moving in more socially-liberal
and progressive directions — this is absolutely counter-productive to
that.
- Login or register to post comments
Submitted by mangeek on Wed, 05/13/2009 - 07:03.