filmmaker in focus: Jennifer Lyon Bell

SHORTS / LOCAL EVENT

San Francisco filmmaker Jennifer Lyon Bell believes that sex is a giant, beautiful, strange, messy, fascinating, fun and thrilling force of nature, not usually captured in the mainstream media’s idea of sex. Bell founded her explicit erotic cinema company Blue Artichoke Films (Amsterdam) to create and collaborate on xxx productions. Her own flavor of adult cinema blurs the genres of documentary, fiction, experimental film, virtual reality, and sex education, as she explores the intensity of longing within sex. Both her filmmaking and her academic/teaching work revolve around the idea of empathy, namely making movies sexy by helping the viewer grow their empathetic connection to the characters. By embracing natural human awkwardness and the unique creativity that partners share during great erotic encounters, Bell’s work evangelizes for a new vision of awesome sex.
You are about to see some whole films, some fragments of films and surprises. This program is made to dive deep into the world of Blue Artichoke and give you the most out of it.

HEADSHOT (2016)
Can a sex scene be hot, even if you can’t see the sex? We think the answer is a resounding “yes”. Inspired by the 1964 Andy Warhol silent film Blow Job, this is a surprisingly intimate portrait of sex, accomplished without any explicit imagery. As in the Warhol original, a cute leather-jacketed young man reaches real-life ecstasy. However, Headshot embraces what Blow Job omits – the emotional ride that makes sex more than just a physical experience. This is the very first time these stars, Chris Brinkhof and Katinka de Vries, have ever appeared on film. Everything you see is happening for the first time, with no script.

SKIN.LIKE.SUN (2019)
Full of love, this artistic documentary captures an afternoon with real-life couple Wim & Floor. In a unique difference from other movies, what you see is exactly what was filmed — we didn’t cut a single second, so we could preserve the feeling of what it feels like for them to be in love. Yet every second is beautiful and captures the blazing-hot chemistry between them.

SILVER SHOES (2016)
This award-winning explicit erotic trilogy intertwines three short stories about the carnal power of what we wear. Fun, bittersweet, surprising, and intimate, the stories may or may not be connected. It’s up to you to decide. In “Silver Shoes: Undressed,” AnnaBelle Lee discovers that her delicate friend (Liandra Dahl) is hiding a secret tough masculine side under her flowered clothes. In “Silver Shoes: The Housesitter,” a lonely young woman (AnnaBelle) has a surprisingly intense reaction to what she finds in the owner’s closet. And, in “Silver Shoes: Mimosa,” Liandra hosts a brunch party and one of her guests brings a handsome friend (newcomer Joost Smoss) with fabulous shiny trousers…but he has a surprise in store.

ADORN (2018)
An experimental erotic game. A man and a woman face each other naked; by the end they are mostly clothed and utterly exhausted. What happens in between is unique and completely improvised by the performers themselves. Restrained by the rules of their game, there is laughing, teasing, fighting, fucking, fingering, kissing. A love scene in reverse. Starring Sadie Lune and Parker Marx, who have such enormous chemistry — and such fun —  that you can hardly believe this is their first time together. With music by acclaimed folk-pop songwriter Zoe Boekbinder.

SECOND DATE (2017)
A portrait of intimacy: Second Date is a lighthearted, unscripted Virtual Reality 3D 360° portrait of two young people fumbling towards ecstasy. Trying to find common ground, their conversation veers from clumsy to joyous and back again — until they finally start connecting for real. This was Anne and Bishop’s real second date, and it was a huge success. It reached an orgasmic conclusion, even though their underwear stayed on. Second Date is probably the world’s first orgasmic clothed Virtual Reality film.

We end the program with a little surprise! 

Tickets can be purchased directly on site at the Schikaneder / Festival headquarters.
Or you can buy it online via EVENTJET

Date

16.04.23

Time

15:30 - 17:30

Location

Schikaneder