How To Lose Your Virginity, AGAIN!

If you missed "How To Lose Your Virginity" at the DOC NYC film festival last November, you now have another chance to catch Therese Shechter's eye-opening documentary. New York Women in Film and Television is screening it tonight (Tuesday, February 25th) at Anthology Film Archives, in New York, 32 Second Avenue.

Therese at the Kinsey Institute

Credit to the Credits: 20 Feet From Stardom

I was completely expecting to love “20 Feet From Stardom,” the Oscar-nominated documentary about backup singers. What I was not prepared for, however, was to be bowled over in the first 3 minutes of the film. They had me with the opening credits.

The title sequence takes vintage album covers, publicity shots, and concert stills, and obscures, Baldessari-style, the faces of the “stars,” with a large colored circles. This simple graphic device forces you to see only the backup singers, telegraphing visually, what the film delivers on in depth. And it’s all set to Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side (“and the colored girls sing …”). Very satisfying, indeed.
 
You can view the actual title footage on graphic designer Scott Grossman’s site. You can read more about director Morgan Neville’s homage to Baldessari in this New York Times piece.

The solid silhouetting used here, is another Baldessari device.

ALL ME: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert

Chain Gang (All Me), 2004
What appears, at first, to be a jumble of white dashes on black, turns out to be prisoners on a chain gang. Blizzards of white dots are vast expanses of cotton, waiting to be picked for pennies a pound. This is the visual language of 67-year old African American artist, Winfred Rembert. His paintings--actually, hides of leather, carved, tooled and dyed--create a graphic diary illustrating life in the segregated rural south.

“ALL ME: The Life and Times of Winfred Rembert,” a feature length documentary directed and produced by Vivian Ducat, premiers this week at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

Chain Gang - The Ditch, 2005
As Rembert’s experiences unfold on screen, we learn that the paintings are completely autobiographical. That includes the chain gang, on which he worked, while serving a prison sentence. He started in the cotton fields as a young child, when he picked alongside “Mama,” the great aunt who raised him.

Rembert’s visual story telling is especially astute when he depicts scenes of everyday activities in the environs of his native Cuthbert, Georgia. Pictures of pool halls and juke joints usually include portraits of specific characters.

On Mama's Cotton Sack, 2002
The artist’s remembrances are riveting in their detail as he recalls the racism he suffered (including a near lynching) the poverty in which he was raised, and his civil rights activism.

Fascinating too, is Rembert's personal journey as an artist. As a kid he made his own toys from whatever materials he could find. Though he picked up leather tooling in prison during the 1970s, it wasn’t until the mid 1990s that Rembert started to translate his memories into images. With shows at Yale University Art Gallery, and Adleson Gallery in New York, his work has gained momentum with collectors.

“ALL ME” will also be shown at festivals in Chicago, Hot Springs and Albany, Georgia. Visit the film’s website for more info and all the details.

Chain Gang Picking Cotton, 2004

Family Picking Cotton, 2003

Saturday Shopping Day, 2000

The Wood Boy, 2007

Jeff's Pool Room, 2003

Smilin' Ben Shorter, 2009

Sugar Cane (Patsy's Mother), 2008

The Baptism, 2003

I got to meet the artist after a
screening of the film during the summer.
Photo: Joan Morgan

How To Lose Your Virginity

Disney starlets flaunt purity rings while writhing on stripper poles, brothels hold million-dollar virginity auctions, and artificial hymens can be had for $30 on Chinese websites.

What’s behind this strange moment in our culture—what’s the deal with virginity?

How To Lose Your Virginity, a new documentary by Therese Schecter, digs beneath the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t double-speak of a society that cynically encourages both virginity and promiscuity. With the same intelligence, diligence and wit she employed in the award-winning I Was a Teenage Feminist, the filmmaker allows the desperately-needed conversation about real-world sexuality to finally take place.

And, how do you lose your virginity? Well, for one thing, you don’t do it alone. The same goes for financing a film. As Schecter so aptly puts it, “We’re on our way to third base—help us go all the way!”

So how about putting out for Therese. Take the “Virginity” pledge, and visit the film’s Kickstarter page to watch a trailer of the film and contribute to the cause.

Also, visit the film’s blog, The American Virgin, for all manner of fascinating, enraging, and comical stuff about virginity and our attitudes towards female sexuality.


Some visuals from The American Virgin blog:

Unfunny T-shirt from Urban Outfiters.

Fashion tips from the Abstinence Clearinghouse

"Virgin with Butterflies" is one of a series of
re-issues of old Harlequin titles.