Good Vibrations and COYOTE Present
The 4th San Francisco Sex Worker Film and Video Festival May 1- 8th, 2005
Sponsors include The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Inc., The M & M Fund, Spectator Magazine, the Coalition on Prostitution (a Sponsored Project of The Women's Building), Cyprian Guild, Film Arts Foundation, Media Alliance, ISWFACE, Bay Area Video Coalition, Trannyfest and Frameline.
Contact: Carol Leigh, Festival Director
415.751.1659 swfest@bayswan.org
From artists' models to muses, from hetaira to geishas, sex workers have been vital participants in arts communities through the centuries. Despite their influence on the arts and culture, polite societies rarely acknowledge the contributions of the demimonde who have also been painters and poets themselves. Lately a growing number are working in contemporary media, film and video, and performing in solo, ensemble theater and in burlesque revues.. Sex worker art festivals and performances, spanning the globe, chronicle contemporary sexual mores with a vision that penetrates our hypocrisies.
Films and videos will focus on sex; prostitutes' rights; organizing efforts and working conditions for strippers; more sex; global sex work and sex work as a labor issue on the international agenda; sex workers as heroes and heroines; sex workers as saints; sex workers as jerks and perverts; sex work and gender identities; queer sex workers; sex education; sex art; sex panic; sexual orientation; sexual identity; porn and erotica; portraits of strippers, prostitutes, doms, madams and much more. Peformances range from spoken word, to burlesque and experimental theater. The 2005 festival will include collaboration with New College Experimental Theater program, ‘Whore College’ educational day for sex workers teaching health, safety and business skills, Sex Worker Outreach Project Rights Forum, and Aphrodite’s Bazaar featuring arts, crafts and literature from our communities.
For more Information about tickets, show schedule, parties, performances, panels and forums, Good Vibrations workshops, special guest stars, festival passes, etc. visit Telephone: 415-751-1659
About Festival Director Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot
Carol Leigh has been a sex worker and activist since the late seventies when she coined the term "sex worker" in 1979. Leigh is webmistress at Prostitutes Education Network http://www.bayswan.org/penet.html, the most extensive sex worker rights site on the web. Leigh was seated on the San Francisco Board of Supervisor's Task Force on Prostitution representing San Francisco's Commission on the Status of Women. She won many awards for her videos including three at the American Film Institute. She teaches multimedia production at several schools in the Bay Area including the Center for Electronic Arts. Last Gasp will release Leigh's new book, Unrepentant Whore: The Collected Work of Scarlot Harlot, this summer.
About Good Vibrations
Established in 1977, Good Vibrations is a worker-owned and operated cooperative comprised mostly of women, who strive to help women and men realize and celebrate their sexual health and potential. They're a group of individuals committed to making the world a place where sex and pleasure are recognized as a birthright. Good Vibrations' branches include retail stores in San Francisco and Berkeley, California; a mail order catalog; web site, www.goodvibes.com; publishing company Down There Press; audio division Passion Press; Sexpositive Productions, the GV Video Production Team; and an Education/Outreach department that presents educational workshops nationwide.
About COYOTE
COYOTE ("Call Off Your Tired Ethics") was founded by Margo St. James in 1973. COYOTE works for the rights of all sex workers: strippers, phone operators, prostitutes, porn actresses etc. of all genders and persuasions. In 1999, COYOTE and Exotic Dancers' Alliance founded the St. James Infirmary an occupational health and safety clinic by and for sex workers in San Francisco. Advocating decriminalization of prostitution, COYOTE is a member of The North American Task Force on Prostitution, .
