The Dartmouth Film Society's program "Hard Core: Cinema, Censorship and the Politicization of Sexuality" is a collection of clips from films which range from Edward Muybrige's attempts in the 1890s to break down human movement using split-second consecutive photographs of naked men and women walking, to today's shot-on-video pornos.
The forum features Nina Hartley, who has acted and directed hard core pornography and has also taught a course at U.C. Berkeley, as a special guest participant. The other panel members are the College Provost Lee Bollinger, Chris Kelly '96 and Sarah Johnston '97. The forum will be moderated by Giavanna Munafo, the director of the Women's Resource Center.
In the almost century long gap between two different styles of pornographic filming lies a rich and varied collection of films: early silent "stag" films which were made for men by men and were seen almost exclusively at bachelor parties etc., short "loops" which started featuring color and sound in the 1960s, and, before the video era took over, feature length films in the 1970s and early 80s which had sound, dialogue and even a narrative structure.
As pornographic films became more elaborate the genre developed a style in which the narrative provided the excuse for staging different sexual "numbers."
A pornographic film was then judged by the number, quality, variety and originality of these numbers.
The questions this program raises are those that underlie the whole "Sex in the Cinema" series, and are questions that will be addressed in the forum immediately following the program.
"Hard Core: Cinema, Censorship and the Politicization of Sexuality," will be curated by Pamela Chandran '90 and is playing this Sunday, November 5, at 7 PM in Spaulding Auditorium. Admission is restricted to DFS passholders.
