Artists' Television Access

Author: Fara

  • Sex Work: Care, Intimacy, & Relationships’ Film Screening

    This selection of films showcases the breadth and nuance of the relationships formed by those who perform erotic labor. In this selection we see how sex workers navigate relationships with clients, romantic partners, friends, and other sex workers beyond commonly held stereotypes. Films include:

    Red Onion (2024) Director: Iris Almaraz

    As you peel back the layers of RED ONION, a day in the life of a phone sex operator becomes an exploration of intimacy, death, and human connection.

    Runtime: 10:00

    Closeness (Nähe) (2024) Director: Sebastian Bergfeld, Birte Rüster, Diana Staub and Aline Blum

    “Closeness” is short film about two people with disabilities who seek sexual assistance. The short film shows the encounters with the sex workers. We hear thoughts of the two protagonists on the topics of sexuality and self-determination.

    Runtime: 12:00

    Fuck-A-Fan

    Chloe Cam, the hottest porn star on social media, launches a “Fuck-a-Fan” contest. Thomas, the winner, arrives raw from a recent heartbreak. Neither is prepared for what happens next.

    Runtime: 24:12

    Boy (2023) Director: Nacho Sesma and Nicolas Goldschmidt

    Set in the cosmopolitan Buenos Aires City and inspired by true stories of male sex workers, Boy follows Franco, an escort with an extraordinary life, for one night.

    Runtime: 15:11

    The Lovers (Selected Episode) (2025) Director: Daviel Shy

    Dafnah, a “Professional Lover,” has organized her life for minimal technological interaction and maximal sexual interaction. She fucks for sport, for love, for work, for meaning. Having grown up in a strict religious home, the daughter of a Rabbi, she is no stranger to living with rules. Her own life has two: no internet in her home and no cis men in her bed– even for work. At 36, working for Veronica, a former Madame, and picking up gigs as an extra for Pool Boi Productions, a radical erotic cinema company, she has finally built a life that fully reflects her values. Then, the pandemic hits. Suddenly, touch can be lethal and sociality demands technology. This inter-related network of sexual and spiritual workers find their ways through rapidly changing unknowns.

    Runtime: 23:00

    Pro () Director: Charlie

    Runtime: 7:10

    Let Them Eat Cake | Stupid Hawt Cooking Show (2025) Director: Riv Grl

    Reagan finds out her boyfriend is cheating on her. Riv comes over to consoles her. They end up going shopping and getting revenge but nothing makes Reagan feel better…. cooking does! Stupid Hawt is a shamelessly sexy and outrageously unconventional cooking show that will leave you asking, “What did I just watch? Was that corn… without the corn?” It’s not just about hawt biiiiitches in the kitchen; it’s a chaotic blend of improv, satire, hilariously bad cooking, and a generous dash of feminine rage, all served up in a slop bowl for you to consume like the indulgent piggy you are.

    Runtime: 23:27

    ~ Intermission ~

    F*ckToys (2025) Director: Annapurna Sriram

    This 16mm fever dream reimagines the Major Arcana of the Tarot through the story of AP: a struggling pollyanna seeking salvation from a curse. AP is promised by not one but multiple psychics that for a cool $1000 -and the sacrifice of a baby lamb- it can be lifted. So she makes money the only way she knows how: scootering her way deeper into the night, and into the uncouth underbelly of Trashtown.

    Runtime: 1:42 min

    Tickets: $15    eventbrite

  • Rewards Program

    An improvisational music project featuring Miles Lassi, Zekarias Thompson, and Skyway Man set to expanded cinema 16mm and 35mm slide projections by Ellie Vanderlip.
    A three-projector celluloid meditation live-scored by improvisational trio Rewards Program, on tectonics, shifting earth, and geologic time.
    MILES LASSI is an interdisciplinary artist based out of Oakland, CA. As a musician, he has performed in over 150 cities throughout North America, Europe and Asia with many
    different ensembles ranging from the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall to national broadway tours like Ain’t Too Proud, Dirty Dancing, and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. Miles is dedicated to creating new media and has done so at the New York Film Festival, Lincoln Center, Apollo Theater, deYoung Museum, Joyce Theater, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, A.C.T., SXSW and Snap Studios/KQED.
    SKYWAY MAN is the alias of keyboardist, songwriter, and producer James Wallace. Based in Oakland via Richmond, VA, and Nashville, TN, he has released seven albums and composed music for Film/TV, including Joe Pera Talks With You (HBO). Over the past 15 years, he has toured extensively across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, performing at festivals like Bonnaroo, Pickathon, SXSW, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and Wilco’s Solid Sound. He has collaborated with Abigail Washburn, Langhorne Slim, Erin Rae, and Maya Hawke, among others. Brittany Howard once named his band a favorite local act in Rolling Stone, and his work has been featured in NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and Stereogum. He’s produced 20 full-length albums for other artists, including Bay Area musicians Mikayla McVey, Milk for the Angry, and Pancho Morris. Over the past few years he’s developed a practice of live instrumental film scoring using keyboards and sequencers.
    ZEKARIAS MUSELE THOMPSON (b. 1983, they/them/their) is an artist based in Oakland, CA, and Reykjavik, IS often working in sonic composition, mark-making, photography, collaborative group practice & performance, and writing. Their practice is concerned with humanity’s conceptual and emotional organizational structures—and how we bring them into material form. Zekarias has presented solo exhibitions and projects at the Museum of the African Diaspora, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, The Lab, Gray Area, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, and the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies. Zekarias is a co-founder of Working Name Studios, a collectively owned and organized arts institution with the mission of building institutional stability and equity for underrepresented creative practices, ideas, and people. They were part of the Emerging Artist Program at the MoAD for 2024, and are currently an MFA candidate in the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley.
    ELLIE VANDERLIP is a San Francisco-based experimental filmmaker, performer, and educator. She received her MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University in 2022. She is a co-director at Oakland’s Shapeshifters Cinema, on the board of directors at San Francisco’s Cinematheque, and maintains a studio at Artists’ Television Access. She has hosted filmmaking workshops with the Exploratorium, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the University of San Francisco, and lectures at St. Mary’s College and San Francisco State University. Her primary focuses are found footage experimental documentary, material cinema, and expanded cinema performance. Her work has screened nationally and internationally, including at San Francisco DocFest and Belgrade’s Kinoscope Festival, and has upcoming writings about alternative archives in Found Footage Magazine.

  • FREEING JUANITA

    Juanita has been unjustly detained in Reynosa, Mexico for over seven years, accused of a crime she didn’t commit and forced to confess in a language she didn’t understand.

    This intimate portrait follows Ana and Pedro, Juanita’s aunt and uncle, on their thousand-mile journey from the highlands of Guatemala to Northern Mexico. With the help of a network of Maya interpreters and the family’s Maya Chuj community, they fight for Juanita’s release and demand justice from the Mexican authorities, a cause that became internationally recognized for its defense of migrants’ rights and language justice.

     

    https://www.freejuanitafilm.com/