Bubbles Galore + We’re Talking Vulva + Drawing the Line

Bubbles Galore
Canada 1996. Director: Cynthia Roberts
Cast: Nina Hartley, Tracy Wright, Daniel MacIvor, Shawna Sexton, Annie Sprinkle, Andrew Scorer

Denounced in the House of Commons as filth unworthy of government funding, Bubbles Galore is Canada’s answer to Boogie Nights, a feminist meta-porno that wears its pastiche of styles (chief among them fantasy and satire) as proudly as its prostheses. Porn icon Nina Hartley plays Bubbles, a former industry star who has turned to producing and directing her own films, much to the dismay of her competitor and ex-lover, Godfrey (MacIvor). When not fending off Godfrey and his henchmen, Bubbles spends most of her time training her new ingénue, Dory Drawers (Sexton), and dealing with her moony assistant, Vivian Klitorsky (a terrific Wright). Needless to say, both tasks inevitably lead to the girl-on-girl action required of the genre. But in affectionately sending up such conventions, it is clear that Roberts is more concerned with celebrating the pleasurable production of female sexuality than soliciting the male gaze. Sharply edited and shot in a wash of “orgasmically” coloured gels, Roberts’ film is also highly self-reflexive, not least in the sly nationalist critique embedded in its casting. For not only is the successful auteur/entrepreneur played by an American actress, but so is the pro-sex divinity (Annie Sprinkle) who turns out to be manipulating the plot. Colour, Beta SP Video. 95 mins.

preceded by

We’re Talking Vulva • A gleeful and instructive rap ode to female genitalia. Canada 1990/Shawna Dempsey, Lori Millan & Tracy Traeger. 16mm, 5 mins.

Drawing the Line • a short documentary of a photo exhibition of the same name by the Vancouver lesbian collective Kiss & Tell. Canada 1992/Lorna Boschman. Video, 7 mins.

-------------------------
Sex Wars
In the 1990s, AIDS and pornography emerged as flashpoints for the queer community in Canada. Film and video artists responded not by capitulating to shaming and negative stereotyping in the press and in parliament, but by unabashedly — and cheekily — celebrating queer sexuality in a series of works that were poetically erotic, politically complex, and (especially in the case of the two features programmed here) campily agitprop.