Film Screenings / Programs / Series
WOMEN, WORKERS, AND WHORES ON FILM
April 4 – April 10
April 4-10, 2025
Guest-programmed by Ayanna Dozier, this series gathers together movies from the late 20th century and early 21st century – many of them made by sex workers – to present an alternative collection of narrative and experimental moving-image works that resist the same old tired ethics around sex work commonly found in independent and mainstream films. The series features films that examine the love life of a whore, the socio-political climate of sex work, the camaraderie between working girls, and the fantasies of a worker. The inclusion of experimental and short films reveals that, more often than not, the more ambitious stories of sex work – the ones that deal with its stickiness, excess, pleasure, and ambivalence – exist outside of wide distribution channels and take risks both formally and narratively.
The majority of films presented in “Women, Workers, and Whores on Film” are made by or in collaboration with someone who has worked in the sex industry, but some – such as A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO and HOUSE OF TOLERANCE – are not. Their inclusion reveals that films that break the script on sex work do not have to come from a sex worker but can be produced by anyone deeply interested in the possibilities that emerge from sexual labor, rather than weaponizing the topic to demean or belittle their characters.
The title, “Women, Workers, and Whores on Film” reflects the changing terms used to describe sex work and speaks to the variety of films featured here. The protagonists of some of the films use “whore” to describe their labor; others are simply workers in a sex industry; while yet others represent women taking back their sexual labor from a political system that demands it for free. Critically, I use the word “whore” because it reflects the social reality of sex workers who are stigmatized and criminalized for their labor, and it is a term I use in solidarity with myself and other people in the sex industry. While sex worker is a more “palatable” descriptor to a wide audience, as the late Carol Leigh (the Scarlet Harlot) argued, it also reinforces the idea that one’s humanity must be tied to their love of being a “worker,” which historically has rarely benefitted whores who are often shut out of labor organizing spaces because of their sexual labor.
“Women, Workers, and Whores on Film” aims to open us to different, complicated visual images of sex workers than we are often exposed to in mainstream narrative film.
“Women, Workers, and Whores on Film” is guest-programmed by Ayanna Dozier, and co-presented with Screen Slate. The introduction and film descriptions are by Ayanna Dozier.
Spike Lee
GIRL 6
1996, 108 min, 35mm
An aspiring New York-based actress struggling with the misogynoir in the industry turns to phone sex in hopes of financing her move to Hollywood to make it big. Though Judy enters with the intention of raising the money and leaving, the fantasy roles that she creates for her clients become portals for her to unearth her desires and exercise her storytelling abilities. Through phone sex, Judy becomes her own director. With an incredibly ridiculous appearance by Madonna and a soundtrack composed of Prince’s B-sides, GIRL 6 is Spike Lee’s most elusive film. This is partly because it was the first of Lee’s films that he did not pen himself. The scriptwriter, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, drew inspiration for the film from her own brief experience as a phone sex operator. Though the film toes the line with the presumed morality of sex work, the agency and ambition of its lead character (Lee described it as an intentional “star role” for Theresa Randle) allows it to rise above its shortcomings. One of Lee’s most formally and narratively ambitious films, GIRL 6 demands a reappraisal from critics who lambasted it at the time for its ambiguous take on sex work.
Preceded by:
Ayanna Dozier NIGHTWALKER 2022, 7 min, 16mm
NIGHTWALKER, an experimental short, examines how the surveillance eye overlaps with the gaze of a potential predator. The film is ambivalent as to whether the character is a sex worker, and is more interested in the act of surveillance “sight-based” discourse that names individuals through visual signifiers presented on the body of a woman of color.
Fri, April 4 at 7:30, Mon, April 7 at 6:15, and Thurs, April 10 at 6:15.
Banmei Takahashi
A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO
1994, 120 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In Japanese with English subtitles.
In what may be the best depiction of harming, berating, and “fucking with” men ever to be depicted onscreen, A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO subverts the audience’s expectations by centering the protagonist’s commitment to her local theater troupe amidst her chaotic night job as a dominatrix. Featuring photography and photo direction by acclaimed kink and taboo visual artist Nobuyoshi Araki (who also receives a story credit), A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO, like WORKING GIRLS, outlines the day-to-day procedural dynamics of the industry, an approach that amplifies both the drama and the humor of these scenarios. Though laced with plenty of sex, the film is anchored by the blossoming friendship between two working girls (an escort and dominatrix), which unfolds over karaoke, theater, drinks, and joyrides.
Preceded by:
Lena Chen CHINESE TOUCH 2023, 3 min, digital
CHINESE TOUCH renders the classic “money shot” image disturbing by taking images of Asian porn actresses’ faces before a “facial” and intersplicing them with footage of the cooking entrepreneur Joyce Chen – seen here as a model of Asian feminine respectability – all set to an audio loop of “Me So Horny”.
Total running time: ca. 125 min.
Sat, April 5 at 4:00, Mon, April 7 at 9:00, and Wed, April 9 at 6:15.
SHORT FILM PROGRAM
This short film program is organized around the excess narratives, forms, and genres around sex work in film. The program opens with Beth and Scott B’s bold hybrid narrative essay film, G-MAN, which depicts the power dynamics between political activists, the police, and the head of the NYC bomb squad and his dominatrix. Lucas Kane and David Gonzalez’s documentary CACHERO//TAXIBOY examines male sex workers in Quito, Ecuador, and their fight for decriminalization. The experimental essay film NIGHTWALKER uses the ambiguity of the body of a woman of color alone at night to play with the visual signifiers of “clocking” a whore that is informed by police law. Tourmaline’s SALACIA collapses time, aesthetics, and space to merge the histories of trans sex workers in NYC, including Mary Jones and Sylvia Rivera. Ariane Labed’s debut narrative short, OLLA, chronicles an Eastern European “mail-order” bride’s experience against the backdrop of a Greek chorus. Closing out the program is WHORE WRITERS by Tall Milk, who uses her luscious, pink-themed home studio as a stage for writers to narrate to the camera their relationship with their body and sex.
Beth & Scott B G-MAN 1978, 28 min, Super-8mm-to-DCP
Lucas Kane CACHERO//TAXIBOY 2018, 11 min, DCP
Ayanna Dozier NIGHTWALKER 2022, 7 min, 16mm-to-DCP
Tourmaline SALACIA 2019, 6 min, 16mm-to-DCP
Ariane Labed OLLA 2019, 28 min, 16mm-to-DCP
Tall Milk WHORE WRITERS 2024, 5 min, DCP
Total running time: ca. 90 min.
Sat, April 5 at 6:45. Followed by a discussion between series programmer Ayanna Dozier and visual artist Natasha Gornik.
Lizzie Borden
WORKING GIRLS
1986, 91 min, 35mm + DCP
Often wrongly described as a documentary on the lives of working girls in an escort house, WORKING GIRLS is a narrative film that has set the standard for fictional movies on sex work. One of the first films to center the workers’ experience with clients, each other, themselves, their partners, and their head madams, WORKING GIRLS is superlative for how much it gets right about the labor politics of sex work. This is largely because the characters in the film are a dramatization of director Lizzie Borden and her film crew’s experiences in the industry. The film outlines the procedural elements of sexual labor in a parlor, including day-to-day tasks like answering the front door, making bodega runs, washing up in between clients, overtime, training new hires, dressing up, breakups, gossip, unfair managing madams who swear they are better than pimps but act no different, threatening to quit, and the cyclical nature of doing it all over again. If there were room for only one narrative film about the industry, WORKING GIRLS would have to be it.
Sat, April 5 at 9:30 (35mm) and Wed, April 9 at 9:00 (DCP).
Cleo Uebelmann
MANO DESTRA
1986, 56 min, 16mm-to-DCP
In one of her short stories, Clarice Lispector contends that the only thing more painful than death is waiting. MANO DESTRA filmically takes that sentiment to task, through an experimental sadomasochism film that blurs the line between still photography and the moving image. The director Cleo Übelmann stars as a dominatrix who arranges and ties up a variety of femme subs to her liking, often leaving them in contorted positions or cabinets for extended periods of time. MANO DESTRA was briefly resurrected in 2014 by director Peter Strickland who cited it as one of the inspirations behind his film THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY, but it has since largely disappeared back into the archives. It’s a daring film for its same-gender dynamic that also centers women – too often films on BDSM examine queer men’s relationship to the field or use it to unpack the power imbalances between heterosexual couples. In this film’s reality, BDSM can be felt for its effect on the body in time, rather than its perceived socio-cultural baggage.
Alison Murray
KISSY SUZUKI SUCK
1992, 18.5 min, video
KISSY SUZUKI SUCK is a madhouse of an experimental short that follows two street-based sex workers as they wait in their car for a trick. Allison Murray’s short was decried by critics upon its release as terroristic and pornographic. In a 1992 interview with Sight & Sound magazine, Murray declared of the uproar, “If men are saying I’m a fag, get used to it…women are asserting I’m a macho, slut, so what?” KISSY SUZUKI SUCK crosses and dismisses the psychoanalytic model of reading cinema through gender division by troubling not just the straights and women but everyone in the damn theater. An ambitious post-punk film KISSY SUZUKI SUCK features heavy dancing, an incredible house song (Coco Steel & Lovebomb’s “Feel It”), spit, women making out with each other, and voiceovers from other working girls on class politics. All these elements ultimately collide with each other, leaving the film to dissolve upon itself via its own excess. It’s perfect.
Total running time: ca. 80 min.
Sun, April 6 at 5:15. Followed by a discussion between series programmer Ayanna Dozier and cultural anthropologist, artist, and community educator Kassandra Sparks.
Bertrand Bonello
HOUSE OF TOLERANCE
2011, 125 min, 35mm
HOUSE OF TOLERANCE is a terrifyingly beautiful ode to the red-light district of Paris during the Belle Époque era. Rather than navigating the 21st-century socio-cultural and economic realities of sex workers, Bonello turns his gaze back in time to find the ambition, struggles, and desires of women who are both the center of society and yet distinctively cut off from it. Though the production and costume design are impeccably lush, Bonello does not glamorize nor chastise the industry. Instead, he examines the communal kinship and struggles of these working women amidst a socio-cultural landscape that limits their artistic input and renders it almost impossible to evade marriage or manual wage labor to make a living. HOUSE OF TOLERANCE is unique in the film archive of sex work thanks to Bonello’s disinterest in the clients themselves. In this suspended reality he positions the workers above the clients – it’s their lives, dreams, fears, and pleasures we experience.
Sun, April 6 at 7:30, Tues, April 8 at 7:30, and Thurs, April 10 at 9:00.
