Larger than life

"Beyond Vanilla" is a documentary about SM, which Conny and I saw as part of the T.E.S. third annual film festival. It is comprised of statically shot interviews with a variety of extremely "out" kinksters, cut up and strung together around a variety of kink themes. I found it a little tedious, but maybe I'm not the right audience. I also felt the selection of themes and people interviewed weren't very representative of SM at large. But, in fairness, I think it's hard to find people to interview who aren't a bit extreme.

Oddly, during the question and answer with the director, someone asked "How did you select who you interviewed?" The answer was the directors desire to present an "accurate sampling of the scene." I found it rather to the contrary. No disrespect meant to the people interviewed, but I know many vanilla people would look at some of them and think these people belong in a freak show.

I'm not passing judgment upon these people, but if you are trying to make a documentary which will foster understanding in a broad audience, you might try to select people to interview which the audience will identify with. I can understand that being a challenge for kink, but if you want to break some new ground, that's the place to do it.
posted 11:44 PM | link |