Some directors at the Cannes film festival say they are using sexual images in their films to challenge pornography and its widespread availability through the Internet.
Larry Clark, one of the directors of the film Destricted, which is made up of a compilation of sex-themed stories, told Reuters that many children have been exposed to pornography from an early age due to its proliferation on the Web.
In his film, Clark interviews young men about sex and then features one of them with his favorite porn star.
American director John Cameron Mitchell, whose film Shortbus is screening in Cannes, says a growing number of young people are using Internet pornography as a way to replace real sex.
In his film Mitchell features amateur actors performing actual sex and masturbation as part of his story of a group of New York young people who gather at an underground club for drinking, talking and sex.
Mitchell doesn’t consider his movie pornographic, but blamed the age-old puritanical thinking in the U.S. for the stigma still attached to sex, making its portrayal a taboo subject for even today’s filmmakers. He said that his movie tries to demystify sex by making it non-erotic and shown as a normal part of life.
Many film critics have said that risqué images from the current crop of films at the festival showing eroticism wouldn’t shock the film festival crowd since past movies have already shown actors performing actual sex in previous movies there.
Among them were the 2004 film 9 Songs, featuring two young actors who played a British scientist and a young coed who have actual sex on camera, several times during the filming.
Director Vincent Gallo’s Brown Bunny, also caused a stir at the festival in 2003 with its scenes showing Gallo getting a blow job from actress Chloe Sevigny.
Anders Morgenthaler, from Denmark, also railed against the porn industry with his animated Princess, showing a priest who is determined to destroy all the films featuring his dead porn star sister in his effort to take care of her five-year-old daughter who had been traumatized by child abuse.
Morgenthaler said he made the film because he disliked the way porn had permeated into many aspects of society, including the sale of clothing and even toys.
But filmmakers aren’t done yet taking a stab at porn. A joint Norwegian-British co-production of Free Jimmy will feature digital sex while We Should Not Exist, features one-time porn actor HPG showing an porn actor trying to get into mainstream films.
