For four and a half “very intense” days last April, Marianna Beck and Jack Hafferkamp videotaped a succession of people having orgasms.
“One couple didn’t want to stop,” says Hafferkamp. “We finally turned off the cameras and went and had lunch.”
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The result of their shoot, culled from 48 hours of tape, is the hour-long video Orgasm! The Faces of Ecstasy. It’s a strikingly intimate documentary–not just because the subjects were asked to keep their eyes open, but also because of the sounds from offscreen: the buzzing of vibrators, the wet slap of a generously applied lubricant.
The couple took on the project partly as an antidote to a “sexually stupid” society. “We’re a culture obsessed with sex,” says Beck, “but not in a way that’s celebratory or enlightened. Sex is usually pathologized rather than promoted as something that’s liberating or healthy.” The video also aims “to demystify a subject that is so incredibly loaded for so many people,” she says.
Orgasm! The Faces of Ecstasy was screened at the Z Film Festival in January, and again last Saturday as part of an erotic art exhibit at Acme Art Works (where it’s playing again this Saturday, March 6). The video inspired nervous laughter at the Z fest, according to Beck and Hafferkamp, but at Acme it was a friendly over-30 crowd, and Beck knew about half of the 20 or so people in attendance.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Newberry.
