SAN FRANCISCO—In Japanese, “Shibari” means simply “to tie," however, the contemporary meaning of Shibari describes an ancient Japanese artistic form of rope bondage. Shibari movies, therefore, refer to films that feature that specific genre of bondage.
Today, The Center for Sex & Culture in San Francisco announced its participation in a rare event, the Shibari Film Festival, hosted by Rope Dojo. The four hour event will take place Saturday, March 1 from 3pm - 7pm, at the Center for Sex & Culture, 1349 Mission Street. The cost is $10 per person, with proceeds to benefit the Center. As a bonus, there will be a Mystery Shibari Theater 3000 contest, in which contestants will dub and lip-synch the dialogues they ought to have said! Win prizes, and enjoy popcorn and sodas, too!
In a statement issued today, the Center explained, "During the event, Midori, a San Francisco based sexuality educator and founder of Rope Bondage Dojo and ForteFemme Women's Dominance Weekend Intensive, will be sharing videos she acquired from the venerable and much missed People's Video in Japan Town of San Francisco. For decades, long before the internet, this little place was the secret treasure trove of rare Japanese movies, from cinephile classics, anime that never made it out of Japan, as well as unusual, niche and fetish adult videos never released in the U.S.
"You had to really know Japan town to locate the simple door and trudge up the stairs," continued the statement. "There you met the owner, a quiet Japanese man and a true movie lover. The front room had all the kid's movies, sword flicks and melodramas, but he also had a back-room where all the fetish and porn videos were kept. First, he had VHS and then started carrying DVDs. He had unlocked every film from the Japanese format so that we could watch it here in our U.S. format machines. For so many years, this was the only reliable source of Japanese bondage imagery and resource for so many of us!
"Sadly he closed the doors last year," concluded the statement. "The change in video rental really crushed his business. It seemed to break his heart in so many ways. When Midori last chatted with him, he was packing up to store to return to Japan to take care of his ailing mother. His clientele in the JAV (Japanese Adult Video) and his own tastes were mostly hetero sexual. This particular collection that Midori acquired reflects this."
Midori wrote the first English language book on shibari, Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage, available here.
More information about contemporary Shibari can also be found here.
Complete information about the Center for Sex & Culture can be found here.
Admittance to the event is 18+ with ID.
