SAN FRANCISCO — The Center for Sex & Culture has announced its participation in what it calls an unusual event, the Shibari Film Festival, which will take place March 1 from 3-7 p.m.
The event will showcase rare Japanese fetish videos depicting shibari, an ancient and artistic form of rope bondage particular to Japan.
According to the event’s organizer Midori, a San Francisco-based sex educator, founder of Rope Dojo and author of the first English-language book on shibari, she acquired the videos from People’s Video in Japan Town in San Francisco. Midori described the owner of the unassuming store as “a quiet Japanses man, who is a true movie lover,” who had to personally unlock each film from its Japanese format to be viewed in the U.S.
When People’s Video shuttered last year, Midori acquired his rare fetish and bondage film collection, mostly of the heterosexual vein.
The upcoming Shibari Film Festival costs $10 per person; proceeds will benefit the Center for Sex & Culture. In addition to the screening component, there will be popcorn and soda and a Mystery Shibari Theater 3000 contest, which, in the spirit of the original show, will give guests a chance to “dub” the videos with humorous dialogues that they “ought to have said,” Midodi says.
Founded by sexologists Carol Queen and Robert Morgan Lawrence in 2000, the Best of the Bay winning nonprofit Center for Sex & Culture houses a library, gallery, archive and hosts sex education and cultural events.
The event is open to those 18 and over.
