Watching Graphic Sexual Horror, Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell’s nonfiction look behind the rise and fall of heavy BDSM porn site Insex.com, the first thought that came to my mind was from my film critic’s perspective: “How’s this gonna play in Peoria?” And the second thought was inevitably from my submissive’s perspective: “Is this gonna give my lifestyle a bad name?”

There is no pat answer to either question, which is why I was so thrilled that co-director Lorentzon found time to let me pick her brain prior to the film’s East Coast premiere at this year’s CineKink Film Festival, on Friday, February 27th at 11:10 pm at Anthology Film Archives. (Full disclosure: Un Piede di Roman Polanski, an homage to Roman Polanski’s foot fetish by myself and Roxanne Kapitsa, will screen the following evening as part of the festival’s “Twisted Knickers” shorts program at 6:45 pm. Stop on by!)

But as I finally sat down to discuss the doc with director Lorentzon, who worked as a producer at Insex.com from 1999 until the site was strong-armed by Homeland Security into closing, I found I didn’t have any questions for her – merely some very strong reactions that I hoped she could shed some light on. So it actually took me by surprise to discover that the issues I was struggling with as an audience member were the same issues that prompted the filmmakers to make the film, and ones that they still struggle with to this day. Frustratingly, there are no answers to the ethical questions “torture porn” raises – only a Pandora’s Box of more questions. So I guess the best one can do is approximate that struggle in image and word.

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