NEW YORK CITY — CockyBoys’ Jake Jaxson wings to Israel in June for the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival, where he will lead a master class and attend screenings of three CockyBoys films.
Jaxson will be joined by Carter Dane, Sean Ford, Liam Riley and Levi Karter, and Karter’s mother, Anne. “Leave it Levi,” a documentary focused on Karter’s first six years in adult, and his personal and professional relationships, will be one of the films screened. “Leave it to Levi” recently has its world premiere at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in Mexico.
The fest will also screen “All Saints: The Bottle Collector,” featuring Ford and Jacen Zhu, and “It’s Not the Pornographer Who Is Perverse…” which is an alternate edit of “Flea Pit,” which won 2019 XBIZ Awards for Movie of the Year and Director of the Year for Bruce LaBruce.
For the master class, Jaxson will “showcase select scenes from films that have inspired him and shaped his work in adult film, while also revealing secrets from behind the scenes of CockyBoys' successful franchise,” a rep said.
A Tel Aviv festival rep described Jaxson as “perhaps the most fascinating director to have emerged from the porn industry since Wakefield Poole, whose heyday was in the early 1970s, a time when he made such films as ‘Boys in the Sand’ and ‘Bijou’ that received favorable reviews from the mainstream press and were shown in commercial cinemas. The phenomenon that is CockyBoys has broken out of the porn industry’s boundaries and have given quite the formidable platform for Jaxson’s rich and extraordinary filmmaking — the man behind this impressive brand that now has millions of male and female followers worldwide.”
Jaxson enthused about being recognized by the only LGBT film festival in the Middle East. “It’s always an honor to have your work highlighted and screened at a film festival, and I am especially proud to have such a nice cross-section of our work featured at the Tel Aviv LGBT festival,” he said. “Not many festivals, even gay ones, will consider films that are overly sexual or considered porn; however this festival, for years, has been on the forefront of making sure that sex is respected and highlighted as a part of our overall gayness.”
He appreciates the platform the festival has given him to speak out on societal stigmas. “More and more, I realize, porn is not what harms people, but it is the stigmas associated with sex,” said Jaxson. “What harms people is shame, guilt and self-loathing. All around the world, so many people have been conditioned to be ashamed of their nakedness, and the joy that comes from loving, open and consensual sexual relationships. Time and again, when we push our sexual selves into the dark, into unspoken places, we then allow others to suppress one of the finest beauties of life, through their fear, hate and hypocrisy! And so, I look forward to proudly sharing these three films in hopes of celebrating the very thing that made us — sex.”
The festival unspools June 5-15; Jaxson’s master class is set for June 12. Click here and also here for additional details and follow the fest on Twitter.
