Tales of Cinema No. 4 – The Porno Restoration | Little White Lies

Tales of Cinema

Tales of Cin­e­ma No. 4 – The Porno Restoration

30 Apr 2016

Words by Nick Pinkerton

Collage of geometric shapes in bold colours; woman's face obscured by red strip.
Collage of geometric shapes in bold colours; woman's face obscured by red strip.
With the pro­lif­er­a­tion of X‑rated inter­net mate­r­i­al, will adult films ever redis­cov­er their artis­tic side?

Inspired by Miguel Gomes’ tac­tic of sto­ry col­lect­ing for Ara­bi­an Nights, we set out in search of off-the-beat­en-path true tales in the hope of glimps­ing the soul of cin­e­ma today. These are sto­ries of obses­sion, acci­dents, gam­bles and mortality…

Sex sells – it also comes with a sell by date. The inter­net pornog­ra­phy era and the public’s inex­haustible appetite to see every vari­ety of the human ani­mal engaged in every pos­si­ble act of the act of phys­i­cal love means that thou­sands upon thou­sands of new fuck flicks will flood the mar­ket every year, sweep­ing yesterday’s prod­uct off of the (now most­ly vir­tu­al) shelves. But as time march­es on, this cease­less in flux only serves to under­line the scarci­ty of adult films pro­duced before the porno-indus­tri­al com­plex had stream­lined its pro­duc­tion meth­ods, those films – real, ana­logue films – which sur­vived offer­ing ten­der com­mem­o­ra­tion of sex acts which occurred in far­away, fan­tas­ti­cal times, like the Ford administration.

One of the first films com­mer­cial­ly dis­trib­uted by Thomas A Edi­son, Inc. in 1896 was the 18-sec­ond kiss between stage actors May Irwin and John Rice, and ever since, the unblink­ing lens has borne wit­ness to count­less acts of staged inti­ma­cy. Smok­ers” and stag reels soon pro­lif­er­at­ed the world over, pro­ject­ed clan­des­tine­ly in broth­els, base­ments, and lodge meet­ings. You may get a glimpse at typ­i­cal exam­ples of the mate­r­i­al in a 2002 com­pi­la­tion film assem­bled by Michel Reil­hac, Polis­sons et Galipettes, com­prised of silent porno­graph­ic vignettes filmed between the turn of the last cen­tu­ry and around 1930. It had a mod­est bou­tique release in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world under the title The Good Old Naughty Days.

What vin­tage adult films remain today, how­ev­er, rep­re­sent only a frac­tion of the total pro­duced – in no area of film his­to­ry out­side of the silents is such a small por­tion of total out­put made to stand in for the whole. The rea­sons for this are man­i­fold. Men who owned blue movies were not gen­er­al­ly inclined to pass them along to pos­ter­i­ty, and many stu­dios who pro­duced adult films dur­ing the porn chic era dis­card­ed their film hold­ings en masse dur­ing the VHS changeover, dis­re­gard­ing the use-val­ue of these films beyond imme­di­ate sala­cious sal­a­bil­i­ty. Cer­tain pro­duc­tions have addi­tion­al val­ue as film art, even those that don’t pos­sess intrin­sic his­tor­i­cal interest.

Adult films are beloved of art direc­tors for the glimpses they offer of peri­od inte­ri­or décor untouched by the hand of a set dress­er, and cher­ished by sex­ol­o­gists as doc­u­men­taries illus­trat­ing how folks – or at least pro­fes­sion­als – fucked in bygone years. So what is hap­pen­ing to our dirty movies? Who is mind­ing our world her­itage of smut, and assur­ing that these remem­brances of orgasms past will not dis­ap­pear from this earth?

Leg­end has it that the pornog­ra­phy col­lec­tion at the Kin­sey Insti­tute at Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty spans the breadth of the mov­ing image’s lifes­pan and is sec­ond only in size to the hold­ings at the Vat­i­can. Though the Kin­sey Insti­tute have a sig­nif­i­cant spank bank, the near­est thing to a prop­er archive” ded­i­cat­ed sole­ly to the col­lec­tion of X‑rated mate­r­i­al is in the pos­ses­sion of The Insti­tute for the Advanced Study of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (IASHS), found­ed in 1976 in San Fran­cis­co by Rev Dr Ted McIl­ven­na and Laird Sut­ton, two for­mer Methodist min­is­ters who over the course of a half-cen­tu­ry amassed a col­lec­tion of some 2,000 fea­ture adult films and 20,000 loops, includ­ing mate­r­i­al they them­selves pro­duced. Oth­er Amer­i­can archives, par­tic­u­lar­ly Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Los Ange­les, have sig­nif­i­cant adult film hold­ings, though these are almost nev­er the films sin­gled out for preser­va­tion attention.

Dan Streible is a pro­fes­sor of archival research at New York Uni­ver­si­ty and the organ­is­er of the Orphan Film Sym­po­sium, who in 2010 played a role in restor­ing a stag reel, The Jan­i­tor (cir­ca 1930), from the Kin­sey Col­lec­tion. Most film archives have porno­graph­ic mate­ri­als in their col­lec­tions,” Streible tells me, but they don’t adver­tise as such, and they don’t put it in their cat­a­logues. They don’t destroy it either, but in terms of expend­ing preser­va­tion dol­lars, it’s rare for these things to be prioritised.”

Long before the dig­i­tal changeover affect­ed the rest of the indus­try, adult the­atres were already purg­ing them­selves of 35mm ana­logue equip­ment, and today the porno the­atre as an insti­tu­tion bare­ly hangs on, a shad­ow of its for­mer self. As a young man I was acquaint­ed with the Fox­chase 3 in Alexan­dria, Vir­ginia, out­side Wash­ing­ton, DC, which divid­ed its three screens between XXX and sec­ond-run art house fare. (I saw The Roy­al Tenen­baums there with my moth­er; it was demol­ished in 2005.) Where adult the­atres can still be found at all in the Unit­ed States, they func­tion as pick-up places for a most­ly grey­ing, Grindr-illit­er­ate clien­tele on the make for same-sex action – this is cer­tain­ly the case with the Fair in Queens and the Cin­e­ma Kings High­way, New York City’s last remain­ing jack shacks.

The pub­lic screen­ing of adult films has today entered its muse­u­mi­fi­ca­tion peri­od, though many insti­tu­tions remain hes­i­tant to touch mate­r­i­al which is wide­ly viewed as hav­ing been cre­at­ed for the express pur­pose of stir­ring tumes­cence. Here, as in archiv­ing and restora­tion, one must con­tend with the board’s con­ser­vatism. The pro­gram­mer of one New York City insti­tu­tion tells me that the only time his high­er ups ever vetoed a pro­gram­ming deci­sion was when he tried to play Deep Throat. In more recent years Radley Met­zger and Joseph Sarno, both prin­ci­pal­ly known for their soft­core efforts, have been hon­oured with NYC ret­ro­spec­tives, while Anthol­o­gy Film Archives has host­ed a recur­ring In the Flesh” series, pro­ject­ing 35mm prints of the­mat­i­cal­ly grouped hard­core titles. In 2012, the Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val Rot­ter­dam played an 18-film trib­ute to the trans­gres­sive sex-death cin­e­ma of São Paulo’s Boca do Lixo’ – the name trans­lates as Mouth of Garbage,’ and refers to a grot­ty, work­ing-class neigh­bour­hood in the cen­tre city rough­ly equiv­a­lent to Times Square – includ­ing fresh 35mm prints struck by the Cin­e­mate­ca Brasileira.

Over 10,000 hardcore features were produced during the theatrical heyday of adult movies.

Even in stuffy, Quak­er Philadel­phia there have been changes afoot – in 2014 the city’s Inter­na­tion­al House host­ed a Cin­e­ma of the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion” pro­gram which includ­ed some of the so-called pat­tern films” pro­duced by McIl­ven­na and Sut­ton under the aus­pices of the Mul­ti-Media Resource Cen­tre (MMRC), sex-pos­i­tive shorts recruit­ing the ser­vices of avant garde film­mak­ers like Con­stance Bee­son, James Broughton and Bar­bara Ham­mer. Sex in San Fran­cis­co” at the Yer­ba Bue­na Cen­tre for the Arts focused on home-grown mate­r­i­al from the late 60s and ear­ly 70s, includ­ing 1968’s Meat Rack, the sole direc­to­r­i­al out­ing of Michael Thomas, the for­mer Strand The­atre own­er and Strand Releas­ing founder.

Los Ange­les’ Cine­fam­i­ly has proven friend­ly to adult films, as has the Brook­lyn-based microcin­e­ma Light Indus­try, whose catholic pro­gram­ming includes Under­ground, exploita­tion, and gallery-world work, and who have dab­bled in X‑rated mate­r­i­al — MMRC shorts, Meat Rack, and a recent pro­gram by film­mak­ers Gabriel Abrantes, Alexan­der Carv­er, Ben­jamin Crot­ty and Daniel Schmidt, track­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of queer imagery from Jean Genet and Ken­neth Anger to the bour­geois lifestyle fetishism” of a 2014 gay porno called Kiss•Hug•Fuck•Love.

An invalu­able resource for infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to all of the above, and a mover and a shak­er in more than one of these series, is Joe Rubin. Co-founder of the dig­i­tal restora­tion lab OCN Dig­i­tal, since 2012 Rubin and his part­ner Ryan Emer­son have run a home video com­pa­ny called Vine­gar Syn­drome, named after the tell­tale stench emit­ted by cel­lu­loid that has begun the process of irre­triev­able decay. While prepar­ing this piece I spoke to Rubin, a seri­ous pros­e­ly­tis­er for adult film, who eschews the term pornog­ra­phy” because he feels that it pre-sup­pos­es the intent of the cre­ator,” and puts a pre­mi­um on restor­ing the orig­i­nal visu­al tex­ture to the films that he works with, so to encour­age their re-eval­u­a­tion as works of art rather than mere vehi­cles for the deliv­ery of filmed sex.

An invet­er­ate col­lec­tor with an ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of hold­ings to choose from in his Bridge­port, Con­necti­cut facil­i­ty, Rubin esti­mates that over 10,000 hard­core fea­tures were pro­duced dur­ing the the­atri­cal exhi­bi­tion hey­day of adult movies, between the late 60s and the begin­ning of the 90s. The process where­by he decides which among these films are wor­thy of resus­ci­ta­tion is a com­pro­mise between com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions and per­son­al pas­sion, what he calls strik­ing a bal­ance between aver­age movies that I’m pret­ty sure will make mon­ey” and movies that I think are inter­est­ing, impor­tant, or wor­thy.” In the for­mer cat­e­go­ry he places the films of the pro­lif­ic Car­los Tobali­na, like Cham­pagne Orgy, in the lat­ter, releas­es like Bob Chinn’s Pris­on­er of Par­adise – described as an ambi­tious Nazi-themed action peri­od piece that feels like a reg­u­lar exploita­tion film that just hap­pens to be hard­core” – or the dou­ble-fea­ture of Baby Rose­mary and Hot Lunch, two excur­sions into XXX by the pro­lif­ic hor­ror direc­tor John Hayes.

Oth­er bou­tique Blu-ray labels like the Euro-cen­tric Sev­erin, Synapse (through their Impulse line), After Hours and Blue Archives have released adult movies sourced from film mate­ri­als, while labels like Gourmet Video, VCA, VCX, and Caballero, focus­ing on the Gold­en Age” of porn, tend to work from 1” video sources. Aside from Vine­gar Syn­drome, Dis­tribip­ix are the only com­pa­ny who’ve been so sin­gle-mind­ed in their ded­i­ca­tion to home video releas­es of X‑rated mate­r­i­al tak­en from orig­i­nal film sources. Found­ed in 1965 by part­ners Arthur Morowitz and Howard Far­ber, Dis­tribpix, Inc were a pro­lif­ic pro­duc­er of orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al for the adult cir­cuit, dis­trib­ut­ing films by Met­zger and Sarno and fea­tur­ing stars like Annie Sprinkle.

Unusu­al among their con­tem­po­raries, Dis­tribpix, who nev­er moved shop from New York, retained the neg­a­tives of their own films as well as the Sam Lake Enter­pris­es cat­a­logue, and under the own­er­ship of Arthur’s son, Steven Morowitz, they’ve con­tin­ued to add to their library. Steven, who prefers the term erot­i­cal­ly-charged films,” took on the admin­is­tra­tion of an archive of thou­sands of ele­ments, hun­dreds of films” at the end of the whole­sale DVD boom times in the ear­ly 00s, but today con­cen­trates on qual­i­ty and lim­it­ed runs,” giv­ing what he called Cri­te­ri­on-type treat­ment to Inside Jen­nifer Welles,” boast­ing of sin­gle-mind­ed devo­tion to each release result­ing in 60-page lin­er note­books, two pounds when they ship, they’re big, they’re gor­geous, every part of it reeks of soul and love.”

Morowitz, a one-man indus­try who says he runs Dis­tribpix like a deli,” along with Vine­gar Syn­drome, rep­re­sent a hard­core of hard­core, ded­i­cat­ed to ensur­ing the preser­va­tion of America’s adult film her­itage. Abroad, par­al­lel efforts are made: Rubin speaks high­ly of the Dan­ish Film Institute’s will­ing­ness to cel­e­brate their nation’s his­to­ry as adult film pio­neers, the first coun­try in the world to legalise pornog­ra­phy. Alpha France, found­ed in France in 1969, would appear to occu­py a posi­tion rough­ly anal­o­gous to that of Dis­tribpix in the US, mak­ing avail­able high qual­i­ty ver­sions of their own archive titles. Nikkat­su, Japan’s old­est movie stu­dio, are as will­ing to cel­e­brate their Roman Porno and pinku eiga” out­put of the 1970s as any of their more tra­di­tion­al­ly pres­ti­gious accomplishments.

More often, how­ev­er, adult films lan­guish in neglect, fit­ting Streible’s def­i­n­i­tion of an Orphan Film: a lit­er­al­ly aban­doned piece that has wound up in an archive with no one act­ing in its inter­ests… vir­tu­al­ly any­thing that’s out­side the com­mer­cial main­stream whose copy­right own­ers are either unknown or absent.” And in this vast ocean of neglect­ed, large­ly unex­plored mate­r­i­al, there may yet be untold trea­sures – so do keep an eye out when clear­ing grandpa’s attic.

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