-
A FILM STUDY comprises of three things. The "film" is the content. Or the artifact. This content be an edited work or raw footage. The "study" is the scientific investigation or experiment around the artifact. The third part is the experience of the film study as a whole; perspectives of the filmmaker, the participants, and the observer; which can cross-reference or ignore each other.
HOLY EROTICA
gallery | EROS FILM STUDIES
The EROS Film Studies are moments I’ve lived with my camera while following the thread of EROS, an exploration beginning with my first docu-erotic short Just For One Day.
By following my authentic arousal, I discovered a spark of purity in “pornography”, circuitously weaving back to my church roots in purity culture, back to my cultural roots in the Philippines; and landing on an original sexual narrative that orients me today.
This thread is my ETHNOGRAPHIC VIDEO JOURNAL OF EROTICISM, a collection of art and artifacts. This exclusive content is available only to the Church of Holy Erotica members.
If I were to compare this curation to pornography — which I rather not but it’s the only reference point available — the benefits of this content are clear as its contrasts.
CURRENT PORNOGRAPHY is a bombardment of thumbnails showcasing the most extreme acts of DISEMBODIED SEXUALITY featuring OBJECTIFIED WOMEN and DISASSOCIATED MEN. There is no setup or follow through of what happens before or after sexual experiences, which is the most important part! Nor is there context to nature or soul.
Beyond the exploitation, current pornography provides NO CONTEXT OR NARRATIVE. What does it mean to include a 3rd person? What does it mean to watch? What is the purpose of BDSM? Apart from contextualizing what is seen, attention should also be given to the viewer’s experience. Am I aroused? Am I scared? The viewer is isolated without identity or community.
The EROS Film Studies prioritizes what pornography does not: CONTEXT, EMBODIMENT, NARRATIVE, AND COMMUNITY.
FILMMAKING | MY PRACTICE
By confronting my SEXUAL TRAUMA with my camera, I can compare what my body felt FILMING to what I can feel WITNESSING my footage. This allows yet a third experience, EDITING, the emotional re-association of my experience. Sometimes, artifacts are re-edited or “un-edited” into other art forms. Every iteration is a self-witnessing.
This ART ALGORITHM of deconstructing-reconstructing, expanding-contracting, is my SELF-ACTUALIZING TOOL.
DECONSTRUCTING FILMMAKING IS DECONSTRUCTING MY TRAUMA including religious conditioning, mainstream media conditioning, cultural norms, and SHAME. As these layers fall, my practice helps me find a base-line, an ORIGINAL SEX NARRATIVE, a homecoming with my Body.
Exhibiting my EROS Film Studies is the COMPLETION of my practice. Now, I am recalibrated with my BODY and experimenting with this dharma with the COHE community.
| N / O
BEFORE EDEN | A RE-FRAME
To calibrate to an original sex narrative, I DISCOVERED A RE-FRAME THROUGH MY FILM-WORK. Informed by years of field study as a minister, filmmaker, apprenticeship in the healing arts, ancient Christian teachings, eastern principles, matriarchal indigenous cultures, modern somatic work and trauma-research, I developed a method by reverse-engineering my faith and filmmaking. It is consolidated below as a GUIDE TO MY EROS FILM STUDIES divided by gender roles.
MASCULINE
As a man, I discovered beholding eroticism like God, through worship, I could hold it. This gave me an important distinction. FOR MEN TO EVOLVE, EQUATING SEXUALITY AS SPIRITUALITY IS ESSENTIAL. SEEING THE EROTIC FEMININE AS HOLY VERSUS THE DEVIL IS THE ALCHEMICAL SWITCH for the disembodied man.
My first film which featured two lesbians in intimacy felt like the two cherubs atop the Ark of the Covenant. Between them was the presence of God, the erotic spark of purity between them.
Every film is an exercise of BEHOLDING, of EMBODYING, of exercising SELF-CONTROL, of radiating GRATITUDE AND LOVE. By being the PROTECTOR versus the VIOLATOR, we TRANSCEND beyond the primal and carnal. We become DIVINE as the subject and act we are witnessing. All that we feel WITHIN OUR BODIES as a results is like the menstrual cycle in the female form, the masculine Walk-About that western cultures have forgotten.
I INVITE MEN to share the role of holding the camera with me, to internalize a transmutation in our being, to be an antenna of integrity for all men to calibrate too.
FEMININE
WOMEN NEED A SAFE SPACE TO SELF-ACTUALIZE. Where they can arouse and open each other in innocence, in carnality, in celebration, in Divine purity. This practice has been documented in the esoteric and matriarchal societies among indigenous cultures.
Spaces like this have existed for generations, hidden from the public, kept secret from institutions of religion, below the radar of men. In forests. In caves. In ESOTERIC ritual. IN MODERN TIMES, THIS WORK IS COMMONLY EXPRESSED IN THE EROTIC ARTS — pole-dancing, burlesque, SHIBARI, etc.
Without context, many of these healing practices are demonized as being Satanic or pornographic. When in actuality, these are SPACES CULTIVATED BY WOMEN SEEKING REFUGE from the men who have abused, raped, and murdered them “in the name of God”.
I INVITE WOMEN to share the role of the muse in front of the camera, embody and expressing their Divinity outward, a prayer given not just to themselves, but to the world around them, and to the men and women and all of creation that is beholding them.
THE PURPOSE OF THE EROS FILM STUDIES is to create a space adjacent to mainstream culture — AS ART — so that this sacred expression can exist somewhere FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO EMBODY OR BEHOLD; to RECLAIM THE HOLY OF EROTICISM RELEASING A WORLD FRAUGHT IN SHAME.
