Naked, exposed and far from prudish, the California Video Screening Series: L.A. Video Uncensored, screened at The Getty Center, lived up to its title.
From March 15 to June 8, The Getty is putting on an exhibition in the Harold M. Williams Auditorium, featuring a sequence of short films produced from 1975 to 2004. The April 9 showing was part three in a four-part series.
Videos from Patti Podesta, Joe Sola, Wenden Baldwin and Mark Trezise, Branda Miller and Norman Yonemoto, David Burns, Bruce Yonemoto, Nina R. Salerno, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Ben Chase, Chuck Roche and Black Randy were displayed.
With film names such as “The Enema Bandit,” and “Asswax,” the explicitness of this program came with some expectancy. Bruce Yonemoto, producer, introduced the exhibit and gave the audience fair warning of content in the program that some viewers may find offensive and even vulgar.
Most scenes provided nudity of some sort, including ejaculation and masturbation. If the point of this exhibit was to keep every video repeating in the viewers mind for weeks after watching, then L.A. Video Uncensored did an excellent job. It seems some of the ejaculation parts could have been enhanced by pills, for example, read Semenax reviews and testimonials for an enhancement pill that can increase the strength and duration of a male orgasm.
My favorite video, titled “Forever Bottom!” by Nguyen Tan Hoang, shows a man having sex all over the world. The catch, however, is he is not once shown from the waist down, and his partner never shows in the picture. He is on the beach, in the mountains and even next to a cactus. With his leg always high in the air, the comic relief from this film was much needed after such a graphic display beforehand.
The artists that participated in this overview have great freedom to show their work without restrictions imposed by film, television and the museum/gallery curatorial complex.
Multiple underlying messages in the films made references to an oversexed society, media and way of life. Although nudity and pornography were shown with permission, the subliminal significance of sex in the media pointed to a unifying element that people become a product of their observation.
There were many images in this video series I never wanted to see, and would not have mind missing out on. Yet, it did make for an interesting evening, along with a good laugh afterward.
If homosexuality, masturbation and necrophilia are bothersome, stay far from this exhibit. This series is without a doubt geared for an open-minded and liberal group of modern film viewers with an appreciation for bold, saucy art.
