The Moral Panic Film Club, February 7th 2014
Where? At The Hackney Attic, 270 Mare Street, London E8 1HE. How to get there: directions.
Tickets are £15 and are available on the Hackney Attic website. Buy your tickets here.
PROGRAM
7 pm – Doors open. Welcome, by the Backlash team. The Hackney Attic comprises a screening room and bar. Meet us and our supporters and allies, while enjoying a drink.
7.30 Video Nasties: Moral panic, Censorship and videotape (2010). Directed by James West. A documentary that analyses the 80’s “moral panic” created by the popularisation of home video and the imagined horrors of making porn accessible to children. The threat of VHS in 1983, the horrors of he internet in 2013… how the shock of the new creates moral panics and absurd legislation in the name of “protecting the children”.
8.45. Panel: with Julian Petley, Ms Tytania, Jerry Barnett and Sarah Harman. Chaired by Myles Jackman, aka Obscenity Lawyer. Scroll down to the bottom of this page, to find out more about the speakers on the “about the speakers” section.
9-30: Break and drinks at the bar.
9-45: Film: The Devils (1971). Starring Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed, directed by Ken Russell.
Ken Russell’s controversial take on XVIIth Century witch trials. Never shown in its original, uncensored version, the film suffered substantial cuts by the BBFC, and even more by its distributors, Warner Bros, due to its graphic scenes of a violent, sexual and religious nature.
We will be showing Mark Kermode’s restored version, the closest to the original, uncensored version.
11.30: Music, DJ and drinks.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Jerry Barnett
@PornPanic
Jerry Barnett began working with Internet technologies since the 1980s. In the mid-1990s he built one of the first commercial online adult websites, and in 2004 he launched Strictly Broadband, the UK’s most popular adult streaming video service of its time. As he became more concerned about censorship in the UK, he started campaigning to defend free speech and sexual expression. He was forced by new regulations to sell his own sites in 2012, and then founded the Sex & Censorship campaign, which he now runs. He is currently writing a book, Porn Panic, which documents the censorship of sexual expression in the UK. He is also a blogger and photographer.
@Sarah_Harman
Currently a film PhD candidate at Brunel University’s Screen Media Research Centre, Sarah Harman’s research has the working title of Returning to Roissy: Female Submission and Masochism in adaptations of the Story of O. She is assistant editor of Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media, contributing co-editor of Screening Twilight: Critical Approaches to a Cinematic Phenomenon (I. B. Tauris, forthcoming), contributing co-editor of Sexualities 16 (8) ‘Reading the Fifty Shades Phenomenon’ and editorial board member for Porn Studies.
Julian Petley
@JulianPetley
Julian Petley is Professor of Screen Media at Brunel University, Chair of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and a member of the advisory board of Index on Censorship. His recent publications include Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain, and The Media and Public Shaming. He was interviewed for the Video Nasties documentary, where he appears, because he was involved in campaigning against the Video Recordings Act right from the start, and against its amendment in the wake of the murder of James Bulger.
Ms Tytania
@Ms_Tytania
Ms Tytania is a London based fetish performer and producer and also a writer and visual artist, with an MA from Goldsmith College and 12 years experience in the adult industry. She established herself as an independent video producer with her project The Urban Chick Supremacy Cell (warning: NSFW) in 2010. This project, an adult members’ website, is a fictional female supremacist terror cell that combines Femdom and feminism and uses the fetish porn genre to challenge the traditional, male-centred representation of female sexual dominance in the adult industry. Ms Tytania is currently in the research stages for a PhD proposal on the invisibility of female sexual dominance in the realm of culture. She has also spoken conferences such as:
Performing Porn – After the computer became boring. Organised by Sarah Harman, 2013.
Eroticon 2013 – Sex bloggers Conference organized by eroticnotebook.co.uk.
Sex on Trial – Organised by Meg Barker and Lisal Downing. London, 2011.
Porn Cultures – Regulation, Political Economy and Regulation, University of Leeds, 2009.
She has had her work as a visual artist exhibited at several major museums and galleries.
The talk will be chaired by
Myles Jackman
@ObscenityLawyer
Law Society Junior Lawyer of the Year. Solicitor-Advocate specialising in Obscenity and Extreme Pornography @HodgeJonesAllen Pro sexual liberties. Defended #PornTrial #ObscenityTrial #TigerPornCase http://bit.ly/rP7FCd Blogs own opinions. Pro sexual liberties. Follow me on twitter – @ObscenityLawyer and facebook – Obscenity Lawyer.