The new Indiana University Cinema opens on January 13, and program director Jon Vickers confirms they'll be making the most of one of the university's sexiest collections: Alfred Kinsey, who ran the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction from the IU Bloomington campus from 1947 until his death it 1956, amassed one of the world's greatest collections of erotic and sex-related films.
The Kinsey Institute film archive consists of approximately 8000 film titles ranging in date from 1915 through the 1970s and includes a variety of formats such as; Super 8, 8mm, 16mm and 35mm. The collections are grouped into the following categories: Historical Stag films; Peepshow; Sex Education; Animal Sex Behavior; Swedish Erotica and Art, Exploitation, and Pornographic feature films.
"The Kinsey Collection," as it has come to be known, has been mostly under lock and key in a university storage facility for the last 60 years, but Vickers seems to be acknowledging it as the treasure trove it is and says figuring out how to deal with this tremendous -- and tremendously controversial -- resource was in his job description from the beginning.
Vickers, who was brought on as IU Cinema director in February 2010, told the Los Angeles Times in a story published yesterday, "The comment I heard frequently was, 'You'll have to figure out what to do with the Kinsey Collection, because it's different than all the others,' " Vickers says. "There was an assumption the programmer would work with the collection, but how to do that was a question for everybody."
For a sense of how the university views the Kinsey Collection and its other film holdings (including the David Bradley Collection, the Black Film Center Archive, The John Ford Collection, The Orson Welles Collection, and The Peter Bogdanovich Collection), here's the IU Cinema Mission statement, via Indiana.edu:
Indiana University Cinema is a world-class facility and program that is dedicated to the scholarly study and highest standards of exhibition of film in its traditional and modern forms. The cinema reinforces Indiana University’s longstanding commitment to excellence in the arts, research, and continuous enhancements to pedagogy. The cinema strengthens university and community diversity by providing fictional and non-fictional cinematic glimpses into other cultures in a shared environment. The cinema is Indiana University’s first research facility capable of collectively revisiting cinematic texts archived within the vast and renowned film print collections held on the Bloomington campus.
That's good news for historians and film fans of every genre, but it's especially good news for the Kinsey Collection: It means that one of the world's most important archives of sex education films, erotica, "stag" films, and pornography may finally get the scholarly treatment -- and public viewings -- it deserves. Access to the collection had previously been limited to qualified researchers (for more on the Kinsey Institute's Film Archive and Video Collection, and to schedule viewing appointments for academic research, visit KinseyInstitute.org).
The new IU Cinema theatre is a state-of-the-art venue, thanks to a full-scale renovation of the 1930s-era University Theatre, and seats nearly 300. IU Cinema will feature screenings seven days a week, and the theatre will be used for university film courses and university-sponsored film festivals and conferences including Film Indiana and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, as a venue for showing student films, and as a film museum to showcase historic films from the archives.
A quick look at the Spring 2011 IU Cinema calendar shows they haven't quite decided what to do with the Kinsey films just yet... I'll keep you posted when any erotic film screenings are announced in the future.
Comments
Have you watched cops lately, the 1st thing they do is offer to help the domestic volition cases person too find a way to break up the family. Do they get some kick back for selling kids into adoption? What kind of policy tells police to start forcing planned parenthood on the people? Are they just the guy/woman that the cop is talking too, maybe having a relationship on the side with? How corrupt and destructive do policy's have to get before we revisit a law that was passed in the dead of nite and a point of order was called and ignored by the speaker at the time. Far to much money is siphoned off citizens by these laws. Far to many kids that don't know who there fathers or mothers are and far to much theft is being justified by genocidal warriors using lies to steel calling it moral? Take your idea of morality, shove it where the sun don't shine and set fire too it. The rich have scandals and the poor get charged and the prisons get the money before they even step in. Bogus laws and worthless policy is the order of the trash making these laws.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!