PAST EVENTS
SECS Fest presents: Insatiable (with Marilyn Chambers biographer, Jared Stearns)
- Saturday, Sep 7, 2024, 9:00pm
- Grand Illusion Cinema
- TICKETS
More than 40 years after its release, INSATIABLE remains a classic of erotic cinema and a showcase for perhaps the biggest name in the 1970s adult movies. It marked Marilyn Chambers’ (BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR) return to the XXX world after failing to find a career in mainstream Hollywood, and also helped kick off the home video revolution as one of the best-selling adult films released during the early years of VHS.
Sandra Chase (Marilyn Chambers) is a beautiful model at the height of her career when she loses both her parents in a tragic accident. She is left with an enormous fortune and the family mansion, but she is sexually unfulfilled and tormented. Sandra searches for ways to gratify her sexual appetite by indulging in her wildest sexual fantasies. John C. Holmes, the most popular adult actor of the era, is featured in the film’s climactic scene. INSATIABLE also includes a scene with Marilyn and actor David Morris on a pool table. It was Marilyn’s favorite scene she ever filmed and ranks as one of the most erotic ever committed to celluloid.
The film will be introduced by special guest Jared Stearns, author of the biography Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers. A Q&A will follow the screening. Copies of Stearns’ book will also be available for purchase at the screening.
For an extra taste of historical context, INSATIABLE will be presented on glorious VHS, preceded by the original trailer on 35mm!
*No one under 18 admitted*
SECS Fest / VHS Uber Alles Secret Show Team-Up
- Friday, Jun 14, 2024, 9:30pm
TOO HOT FOR ALLES!
For the first time, VHS Uber Alles and the Seattle Erotica Cinema Society team up to present a movie that is a bit too risqué for a typical VHS Uber Alles show.
This provocative documentary takes you onto the stage, behind the lights and into the lives of five dancers who make their living taking off their clothes. One is a Vegas showgirl. Two others work the remote, rowdy bars of western Canada. Another is a young hopeful from Los Angeles who dreams of becoming a top mainstream performer, and the fifth has a way with whips. See them in action as they perform, learn how they feel about themselves, and go with them to the dazzling, first-of-its-kind Convention where they compete for the top prize of $25,000! The lights are going down, the music’s coming up, and you’re about to be tantalized by every minute of this fascinating documentary’s look at this glamorous, gritty world, and the unique art form it revolves around.
NEVER RELEASED ON DVD! ONLY ON VHS! ONLY $3!
Best of SECS Fest at the Pickford Film Center
Sat, Jun 22, 2024
BENEFIT SCREENING: NET PROCEEDS DONATED TO BELLINGHAM QUEER COLLECTIVE
The Best of SECS Fest features the best short films from the 2023 edition of SECS Fest. Founded by the Seattle Erotica Cinema Society in 2016, SECS Fest features a diverse range of sexually explicit representations (focusing on work by queer and feminist filmmakers), finding beauty in erotic difference and inspiring adult conversations about sex. This compilation of shorts features such carnal delights as…hotel-room blowbangs, private BDSM fantasies, stop-motion lesbians, Black queer joy, transmasc self-discovery, witchy wrestling, masturbation monsters, gay-magical realism, and athletic action in an abandoned Olympic stadium! (Contains sexually explicit material. Adults (18+) only.)
SECS Fest Presents California Creamin’: a 16mm Grindhouse Event
Friday, Apr 19, 2024, 9:30pm
California has long been at the center of the entertainment industry, as it also was for the adult film business during the grindhouse era. For CALIFORNIA CREAMIN’, the Seattle Erotica Cinema Society has assembled a program of long-lost, West Coast sex cinema on 16mm. Step into the experience of attending a storefront porn theater during the rise and fall of the adult cinema’s Golden Age!
The program will open with a selection of short “beaver” films, set to a psychedelic soundtrack.
The feature is a rarely-seen Golden Age film from 1978–and even more rare as an early example of a hardcore film written and directed by an adult film actress. In this low-budget sex thriller, Sugar is hired to track down a man, played by the hunky Mike Ranger (INSATIABLE, TABOO). But when she finds him, she must decide if her loyalties fall with the criminals that hired her or with a man for whom she has found affection. [Content notice: This feature contains a fictional rape scene.]
This program will be introduced by film and media scholar, David Church, Ph.D., providing historical background on the West Coast adult film scene and 16mm storefront theaters.
PLEASE NOTE: This event is mask mandatory. Please bring a mask. There will also be masks available at the door.
*No one under 18 admitted*
TEENAGE GRINDHOUSE DOUBLE-FEATURE – presented in 16mm!
Friday, March 8 – 9:30 pm at the Grand Illusion Cinema
The Seattle Erotica Cinema Society presents a double-feature of early 1970s explicit sexploitation flicks. In white-coater comedic parody, sexologist Doctor Cordova treats the most challenging sexual problems of the new generation of post-sexual revolution youth of the 1970s. Next, Rene Bond introduces a series of erotic vignettes that enact the actual fantasies of youth that are more sexually adventurous and curious than their parents’ generation. Featuring Rene Bond, Marc Stevens, and Andrea True.
These films are presented in color, original 16mm film from the Seattle Erotica Cinema’s Society’s collection of film prints.
This program will be introduced by film and media scholar, David Church, Ph.D., providing historical background on the erotic documentaries, i.e. white coaters of the 60s and 70s.
PLEASE NOTE: This event is mask mandatory. Please bring a mask. There will also be masks available at the door.
*No one under 18 admitted*
A History of the Blue Movie (1970) – Father’s Day 2023
SECS Fest presents: A HISTORY OF THE BLUE MOVIE Alex de Renzy / 1970 115 min / 16mm Playing June 18
One of the best compilations of early “stag” footage, containing all those fabled favorites that once only saw the insides of brothels and affiliated “gentlemen’s clubs.” The earliest American stag movie known to survive, A Free Ride (ca. 1915), still contains seriously steamy threesome action between two commendably eager females and one ready, willing and very able male. The movie’s true highlight is the legendary NUN’S STORY about a stunning Sister who sheds her habit to make genuinely passionate love with her Elvis-pompadoured boyfriend before re-donning the cloth at scene’s end. Compiled by and new stags produced by the late great Alex de Renzy – one of the greatest erotic filmmakers of all time with classics like Femmes de Sade and Baby Face. An important and potent excursion into porno’s past.
Sunday, June 18: 8pm – Grand Illusion Cinema Masks are required for this show. *No one under 18 admitted.* Buy Tickets
BEST OF SECS FEST 2022: SHORT FILMS
The Best of SECS Fest 2022: Short Films
Various · 2022
112min · DCP
Playing May 2
SECS Fest presents 10 favorite short films that were selected for SECS Fest 2022. SECS Fest has selected 10 short films that exhibit the genre diversity of erotic filmmaking today, created by international filmmakers who are just as boundary-breaking as the films that they create. In this selection of shorts, there will be a film for all tastes, wherever they fall on the sexual and gender spectrums. There are documentaries, sci-fi, comedy, animation, poetry, and even a touch of kink. Highlights include: a feminist reinterpretation of the 1960s sexploitation genre; animated Japanese rope bondage; sapphic figure drawing; platonic pegging; Virginia Wolfe-inspired gender fluid pornography; gratuitously sweaty farmers; science fiction gender demolition; and more… Includes SECS Fest Best Sex-positive Short Film: “Sovereign Sex”; SECS Fest Best Humor Film: “Sweat of His Cow”; and SECS Fest Best Short Film: “Bang, Click, Bang”. *No one under 18 admitted*
Tuesday, May 2: 9:15 pm The Grand Illusion Cinema 
BEST OF SECS FEST 2022 : NARCISSISM – THE AUTOEROTIC IMAGES
Narcissism: The Auto-Erotic Images
Toni Karat · 2023
91min
Playing Apr 21 – Grand Illusion Cinema
BEST OF SECS FEST! How do we look into the mirror? Do we allow ourselves a narcissistic or even covetous view? And how is it influenced by our gender and socialization? Are we able to love ourselves and our reflection? And why do lesbians often have an especially difficult relationship with narcissism? These are some of the questions Toni Karat is exploring in this project, by capturing each protagonist‘s intimate view in the mirror at an old and untouched attic from 1929: A playground and projection screen for border-crossers of all shades! “We often talk of narcissism in negative terms, due to social media and the prevalence of the spectacle over material reality. But what if there’s more to the story? What if a keen engagement with one’s own image is vital to the survival of sub-cultural or marginal identities? Returning us to the classic myth of Narcissus, who saw himself and fell in love, director Toni Karat presents a different angle on what it means to create and love one’s image as a queer person. Featuring many of the famous faces from Berlin’s radical porn and sex-positive scene, this is a subtle and thoughtful film that interrogates who gets to be visible, who gets to be beautiful and who gets to control their own image.” Jay Bernard, BFI Flare Film Festival, London
BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes and Sadomasochism
Michelle Handelman · 1995 · USA
77min · digital
Playing Mar 31
ENCORE SCREENING!
Presented by SECS Fest! During the early 1990s, San Francisco was the epicenter of body modification and gender nonconformity, with transgender pioneers like Patrick Califia and Tala Brandeis fighting for visibility alongside the voice of a bold S/M community. Michelle Handelman’s provocative and pioneering documentary captures these queer outlaws in their zeitgeist moment, shot on digital video with an unfiltered rawness that mirrors the activism of the era. From pushy bottoms to macho femmes, BLOODSISTERS immerses the viewer in the San Francisco leatherdyke scene, shattering assumptions about gender and lesbian sexuality, while broadening the discussion about personal expressions of eroticism and their political implications. In the 1990s, the movie was attacked in congress by the American Family Association for its depictions of radical lesbian sexuality. More than twenty-five years later, it has become recognized as a treasured historical document of a movement that tore down barriers of sex, gender, and activism. “What was perhaps meant to document a moment in history has proven every single time I’ve watched it that it hasn’t aged at all. This is both a testament to the lack of progress in the larger scope of American politics, but also affirms that leatherdykes have been forward thinking when it comes to sexuality and gender long before Bloodsisters was created. I am forever grateful for the spark that this film ignited in me, in my queer imagination, and in the connection to my erotic heritage.” DaemonumX, Autostraddle “Released in 1995 and directed by video artist and filmmaker Michelle Handelman, BloodSisters is a vital archive of San Francisco’s once-thriving leatherdyke community. It’s also a rare time capsule of a community at risk of erasure, whether by assimilation or puritanism, and is surprisingly current in its discussion of the ever-evolving spectrum of lesbian/dyke/queer identity… In a world that would rather erase all alternative lifestyles, BloodSisters is a vital archive of queer history.” Jude Dry, IndieWire
