The London Fetish Film Festival returned this December for its fifth year and a weekend of documentaries, art films and more. We were lucky enough to go along to the first evening of programming.
The first film The Pleasure in Pain by Curtis Blair is a documentary film in which we hear from a switch, a sadist, a masochist, a dom and the founder of fetish party Klub Verboten. They discuss the impact of the new generation on the kink scene, how it has expanded and diversified both in terms of the community - becoming queerer and more genderless - and the forms of kink that are being explored within it. Something that all of the interviewees underline is the importance of intimacy beyond sex, and aftercare: “without aftercare you don’t have BDSM,” says Cherry Valour.
The second film Insight Kink by Mistress Deva offers a window into some of the diversity of the kink scene that The Pleasure in Pain shed light on. The interviewees welcome us into their practises: tantra spanking, dental fetishes, shibari and vacuum beds. Once again it keeps coming back to care, to the psychological element of their kink and fetish practices, to what they offer to their participants emotionally.
The final film in the documentary section of the programme, Lasting Marks by Charlie Lyne, looks back at Operation Spanner which saw a group of gay men in 1990, at the height of the AIDS crisis, being sent to prison when a videotape of a consensual sex party was found by the police. Despite being grossly misrepresented by the media as violent deviants, there were mass public protests around the arrests and convictions. The men received postcards, letters, erotica during their sentences. Narrator Roland Jaggard tells his story and the story of his friends with warmth and humour. The film was a particular highlight of the evening.
In the Aktion Kink section, Actus V and Version 1.1 by Kris Canavan explore kink and performance art, consent and complicity. In Actus V Kris welcomes people into a performance space, hugging them to offer them entry and then inviting them to pour black liquid onto Kris’s body, into their mouth and then follow them through the streets in a meditation on their own suicide attempt, the torture practise of waterboarding and their relationship to kink.
The third segment of the programme was a selection of kink art films: films that highlighted the beauty of fetish. In Tulip a gimp mask is constructed out of petals. In Mutations of Desire light falls on red latex, sharp nails flash through plastic gloves.
The main programme finishes with a fascinating panel discussion, where some of the filmmakers come together to speak about their work. They talk about their own relationships to kink, translating these stories onto the screen and the continued impact of the precedent set by Operation Spanner on the kink community today.
The final section of the evening features a look back at the 2024 award winners with highlights including a beautifully made film called Alicja about a young girl longing for sweat, for the wetness of a mouldy peach, and Capsule House which follows a dom walking her subs in a forest.
The London Fetish Film Festival celebrates the diversity and creativity of the kink scene, and the care and community that is at its heart.