Ron Athey

HotMen CoolBoyz (or H.M.C.B.) is a Danish adult film directed by Knud Vesterskov and starring Ron Athey and Billy Herrington. It is the only gay hardcore pornographic film ever produced by an established mainstream film company, yet upon its release was almost completely ignored by the Danish press, and only later started to gain an international reputation for its unique artistic imagery.

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In this documentary Kerkhof takes the viewer into a bizarre underworld, the sub-culture of blood art and body piercing performance art. Kerkhof's camera registered a performance by the American blood artist Ron Athey which took place during the FREAK ZONE festival in Lille, France in May 1997. The camerawork is so freaky one would almost suspect it is under the influence of heroin. The film includes interviews with Athey as well as shocking live fragments wherein Athey works his face over with injection needles. The crazy, maniacal clamour of the HIV positive priest/performer gives us insights into the motives and goals of this group of masochistic performance artists. Somebody who entertains his audience by cutting and stabbing himself; is this art? Who can say? What is beyond question is that Kerkhof's masterful use of the camera and editing not only obscures the images but also the boundary between art and unbearable filth.

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Documentary exploring Ron Athey’s life and career as a queer HIV-positive body modification and performance artist, including several of Athey’s internationally staged works from the late 1990s.

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A look at the sex lives of the guys who make L.A. adult movies.

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But happily Kerkhof the uncompromising iconoclast is back. With his newest film RON ATHEY: IT’S SCRIPTED (the original title RON ATHEY: SO MANY WAYS TO SAY HALLELUJAH had to be changed because there is already a 2 hour documentary in production under this title) he has delivered a convincing artistic achievement. Those without strong stomachs will probably find the overwhelming amount of injection needles and razor blades a bit too much, but the film is so cleverly constructed that one cannot look away.

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Based off a homophobic Bataille essay — L’Anus Solaire (1931) — which draws the erect penis as the sun, and the anus as the nighttime, attracted to each other but unable to exist together, Ron Athey’s performance work aims to queer Bataille’s theory. After pinning his face and head into a crown, Athey proceeds to fuck himself with a dildo attached to a pair of high heels, eventually releasing a string of pearls from his anus.

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Reminiscent of Sunset Boulevard, the action is transposed from the silver screen's old backlots to contemporary male prostitution and the pornographic industry.

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Prostrate probing interviews! Live action murder! Naked people! Tired death-rockers! And more! Much more!!

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Ron Athey is a rising Los Angeles performance artist who presents his disturbing and power­ful S&M-related work in the underground club circuit. The tattoos on Ron's body, inspired by tribal markings and other religious imagery, are reference to stages in his life, from his childhood in a Latino neighbourhood, through his years of drug addiction and punk rock, to his present involvement in the 'Modern Primi­tive' movement in LA. This self-narrated doc­umentary is a complex account of an individual contending with the extremes of human experience.

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