Radical Sex Education Films from San Francisco's Multi-Media Resource Center

Eyetoon, dir. Jerry Abrams, 1968, US, 16mm

I'm overjoyed to have the opportunity to present the screening Radical Sex Education Films from San Francisco's Multi-Media Resource Center at the esteemed Brooklyn microcinema Light Industry this coming Tuesday, August 12. This is a program that I researched and developed as part of the series Free to Love: The Cinema of the Sexual Revolution which took place January-February 2014 at International House Philadelphia. The subject, content and context of these films is a beautiful confluence of three major interests of mine: psychedelia, sex and experimental film. This upcoming screening will have a different lineup than the previous screening at IHP. There are so many films that were produced and distributed by the MMRC that each subsequent screening on this topic can and naturally should reflect the breadth of films that the company repped. 

The program is as follows:

• Eyetoon, Jerry Abrams, 1968, 16mm, 8 mins
• Unfolding, Constance Beeson, 1969, 16mm, 17 mins
• The Now, Constance Beeson, 1972, 16mm, 16 mins
• Desire Pie, Lisa Crafts, 1976, 16mm, 5 mins
• Near the Big Chakra, Alice Anne Parker (aka Anne Severson), 1972, 16mm, 17 mins

I'll set the stage for the screening of these titles and also give some new information about these films I've learned subsequent to the publication of my article of the same name in the book/DVD catalog Free to Love: The Cinema of the Sexual Revolution. The catalog also features essays by J Hoberman, Whitney Strub, Elena Gorfinkel and Eric Schaefer, a conversation between A.K. Burns, A.L. Steiner, Barbara Hammer and M.M. Serra, as well as an introduction by series curator Jesse Pires. The DVD contains three films which were distributed by the MMRC: Desire Pie, A Quickie (Dirk Kortz, 1970) and Norien Ten (John Knoop, 1972).