FREE YR DICK is a 75-minute traveling shorts block featuring 9 contemporary works in the tradition of the queer underground. Together, these shorts form a bold and raunchy punk cinema collection that celebrates “deviant” sexualities with humor and warmth.
Curated by Henry Hanson.

THE FILMS

Content Advisory: substance abuse, nudity, unsimulated explicit sex, vomiting/wretching, homophobic slurs. This program is unrated and contains mature content not recommended for anyone under the age of 18.

ACCESSIBILITY: All films include open captions in English.

PRESS

• Best porn at a short films screening, Chicago Reader

CURATOR’S STATEMENT

“Queer people have been telling our own stories in our own ways since the dawn of the moving image. We may not have been able to openly represent our lives on big-budget productions, but we always found a way — whether by utilizing consumer-grade technology, sneaking a broadcast camera out of our day job at the news station, or embracing the relative freedom of pornography.

Though it would have been impossible for work made under such conditions to look like mainstream media, these limitations gave rise to a unique, rich tradition with its own set of aesthetic conventions. But as the radical gay liberation movement became absorbed into mainstream politics and defanged into the moderate ‘LGBT rights’ movement, so too has the commercial sector started to consume our culture, sanitize it, and sell it back to us. 

The mainstream press circuit seems to concede space for one or two queer films a year and each, for their short stint in the limelight, become fodder for a discourse cycle of moral purity tests about The Gay Representation Movie. Meanwhile, thousands of existing movies by and about queers go completely ignored in this media bonanza, ensuring that most of our cultural output is buried and only the most establishment-friendly versions of our stories are legitimized. 

Challenging, provocative, and exciting queer films are being made every day, whether or not they elicit any thinkpieces. With Free Yr Dick, my goal was to showcase my own film in the context of peers who I feel are taking up the helm of queer underground filmmaking and bringing these traditions into the future. What I came up with is a collection of films that explore so-called deviant sexualities with humor and warmth. These films are bold, raunchy, funny, messy, charming, and a testament to just how sweet perversion can be.”

PROGRAM LIST: 

Monogamy House - Henry Hanson & Mitch Mitchell (USA, 2022) 
Spooky NY T4T - Frances Arpaia (USA, 2019)
Més Cheris - Ethan Folk & Ty Wardwell (Germany, 2020)
Splish Splash by Frances Arpaia (USA, 2021)
Rose by Lane Michael Stanely (USA, 2023)
ADORABLE by Cheng-Hsu Chung (Germany, 2018)
Don’t Test Ur Ex by Jo Güstin (Canada, 2022) 
2 Gurls 1 Jug by Frances Arpaia (USA, 2021)
Bros Before by Henry Hanson (USA, 2022)