Known for Acting
Wayward Canadian, Matthew, crushed by the isolation of being new to Berlin, turns his sexual desires toward Matthias that spiral into a dark fixation of assumed identity. Soon, this obsessive power struggle between the two, careens toward brutal passion and violence in a bid for dominance.
It is the year 2060 and AIDS has been eradicated. However, in some, the HIV virus has now mutated into a gene from which a drug can be produced that has become the white powder of the twenty-first century. With a virtually supported scanning system, secret police are trying to identify anyone who carries this gene. Filmed in Berlin, Taiwan-born multimedia artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang’s science fiction dystopia revolves around a struggle to gain control over the production and exploitation of bodily fluids. Her film is like an orgiastic opera; a breathless round of bodies, secretions, performances and sexual acts often performed in the service of an overriding economy. An unusual, largely experimental and deliberately parapornographic drama in which the borders between the sexes as well as homo-, hetero-, bi-, trans- or intersexual are constantly blurred.
Spunk is an experimental documentary where reality and virtual reality blend into a surrealistic sexual collage. 36 minutes long, it showcases digital sex with webcams, mobile phones and the fantasies the participants live through the digital media. Spunk has two parts. In the first it references the internet aesthetics and online gay cruising through time. In the second it transports the viewer into a fantasy world. In those virtual settings horny men openly demonstrate their cyber sexuality.
Thirty-five Portuguese dancers undress in front of the camera. They become the object of desire with a sensual provocative performance. Eclectic dance disciplines help this film to explore an exhibitionist view of the male nude. This is a statement about the current financial situation in Portugal and the lack of fundings to support artistic initiatives.
