Bean Flicks Festival
Birmingham’s 1st ethical, feminist, queer & kink-positive porn festival. Two nights of discussions and screenings with a stellar line up of sex & porn researchers, performers, artists, activists and creators and the ‘Best Slumber Party Ever!’ fest wrap party over Valentine’s weekend.
Bean Flicks Festival: Program
Friday
6pm Dirty Soapbox
Contribute to Birmingham’s first Sex Positive and Inclusivity Manifesto. In three minutes or less, tell us your vision for a future that respects everyone’s desires in an ethical way.
7pm Queering/Querying Spaces
Jasmine Gardosi kicks off the fest with poetry exploring sexuality and gender identity, and reflections on how we might educate and evolve spaces by calling in, calling out, or simply by being ourselves safely. Gardosi is an awarding winning poet, multiple slam champion, with appearances across BBC Radio, at Glastonbury Festival and on Button Poetry. Film screening: Shanahoy’s Best Slumber Party Ever*
8.15pm RAW SEX: What IS ethical gay porn?
Prof John Mercer and Charlie Sarson explore what an ethical gay porn might mean. Whose ethics? Whose porn? Whose decisions? Critical questions that matter for gay men, especially when orthodoxies around ‘safe’ and ‘responsible’ gay sex are increasingly overturned. A session designed to disrupt easy consensus.
9pm Why we run London Porn Film Festival despite protests, censorship, and hate.
In April 2019, the third London Porn Film Festival was attacked by trans and sex worker exclusionary radical feminists. Despite increased costs, an aggressive threat of prosecution, being forced to censor sections, and a visit from the police, the festival had its best year yet! Max Disgrace, co-organiser of the festival, shares details of the story and the reasons why the festival was started in the first place. Film screening: Max Disgrace’s and Lina Bembe’s Tribute
10pm Three in a bed and the little one said, ‘Pass the lube’
Dr Ryan Scoats, reads from his book, ‘Understanding Threesomes: Gender, Sex, & Consensual Non-Monogamy’ and discusses how understanding different sex practices expands sexual possibilities beyond those steeped in stereotypes and problematic foundations. Film screening: Erica Lust’s Heidi & the Dough Boys
10.45pm Late Night Flicks
less talk, more porn. Join us for late night screenings of some of the best international ethical, feminist, queer and kink-positive porn shorts. Three films: Dear Jiz, Linger, and Chrystal Clear.
Bean Flicks Festival: Program
Saturday
5pm Brown Girls Do It
Iqra Choudhry and Alicia Anane of the ‘Brown Girls Do It’ podcast kick of Saturday with an interactive session on diversity and inclusivity in Relationship and Sex Education– a topical subject in Birmingham with recent backlashes against LGBTQ+ inclusivity in schools.
6pm Blurred Boundaries: It’s not who you go to bed WITH, but who you go to bed AS
Dr Michell Chresfield and Dr Lucy Neville explore sexualities, desire, and subjecthood based on the principle: ‘It’s not who you go to bed with, but who you go to bed as.’ Chresfield teaches gender, sexuality, and the history of science, medicine, race and identity in 20th century America and has appeared on BBC Radio 4. Neville, author of Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: Women & Gay Male Pornography and Erotica, explores women’s engagement with sex, sex work and pornography.
7.15pm *Keynote* Ethics & Desires with Vex Ashley
Vex Ashley provides Bean Flicks’ keynote with reflections on the festival’s theme, ‘Ethics & Desires,’ through the lens of her work at A Four Chambered Heart. After rejecting being demoted to “muse,” spending 3 years at art school and getting naked online as a cam girl, Ashley started making work at Four Chambers to expand the idea of what sex on film could say, do and be. Vex performs in, directs, edits and produces the Four Chambers project in collaboration with a partner and the performers. Film screening: Four Chamber’s Archetype .
8.30pm Disabled, Desirable and DTF
Mat Fraser and Gill Leno address taboos around disabled people being desirable, sexual and down to fuck. Fraser has been an internationally renowned disabled actor, writer, and a pioneer, bringing Disability Arts into mainstream arts environments, for over twenty five years. He is known for his TV work (BBC/HBO series “His Dark Materials”), hosts the Erotic awards, and advocates for sexual expression in Disability Arts. Leno, local Birmingham *legend*, is a specialist sex and relationships educator, writer, researcher and advocate working with people with intellectual, physical and sensory disabilities and autism spectrum conditions. Leno focuses on sex and body positive, pleasure focused education for everyone and sexual citizenship for all. Film screening: Clarke Matthews’ KRUTCH
9.15pm Professional Domination – Mistress Tess & Mistress Dita
Bean Flicks is honoured to have the internationally renowned Mistress Tess and Mistress Dita in conversation. Mistress Tess and Mistress Dita have a wealth of expertise, are authorities in their craft and each own their own exquisite dungeon/fetish rooms. Both are top Pro-Dommes in the UK, with fans all over the world.
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10pm Fest Wrap Party: BEST SLUMBER PARTY EVER
We’ll be drawing proceedings to an end late Saturday night with a tribute to the candy punk aesthetic of one of our favourite porn makers, Samuel Shanahoy. (£5 entry, separate to fest tix)
• Join local artist Ruth Harvey for Porn-e-oke, cum it’ll be a riot.
• Post us your hottest, saddest and funniest sex stories and we’ll read them in Bed Post Tales.
• Music from DJs Virgina Bludclart and b_vo.
More info
Date & time
Centrala
Unit 4, Minerva Works
158 Fazeley Street
Birmingham, United Kingdom
B5 5RT
Tickets
Advance tickets only €11.55 here.
+44 121 513 0240