3301 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90004
Dirty Looks returns with our annual 24-hour porn theatre – Sesión Continua! This year boasts the largest collection of 16mm hardcore screened in Los Angeles since the late 1980s – with over 7-hours of classic homophile celluloid presented in its original exhibition format.
Before home video became a household thing, porn was a theatrical experience. It was also the first commercial way for LGBT filmmakers to place their lives on screen. Including six rare 16mm prints (among them a lost film) pulled from the archive of porn preservationists, Vinegar Syndrome, Dirty Looks has assembled a free flowing program that diversifies gay porn’s oft-limited lens of focus, while also paying homage to Los Angeles’ distinct role in porn and underground film production.
From midnight Friday through midnight Saturday, Dirty Looks will screen rare and classic works of gay, lesbian and bisexual erotica in “sesión continua”-style: no schedules, no set attendance times. Slip in and out or stay a while, come together to witness a public approach towards explicit cinema that blended avant-garde film forms with titillating, haunting, and forbidden erotic imagery.
Sesión Continua will take place at Son of Semele, a 36-seat theater in Historic Filipinotown that has been operating since 2003. We want to convey the intimacy and appetites that animated historic porn theaters like the Park or the Coronet, with a limited seating that calls for closeness and an extended program that lubricates the flow of audiences into the theater. The project was originally devised by DL creative director, Bradford Nordeen, with Clara Lopez Menendez in 2015 and was previously staged at Machine Projects (2015, 2016).
Poster design by Aimee Goguen. Special thanks to Evan Purchell
Join us for this very special Dirty Looks screening. Come early, come late, come and leave or come and stay.