Kamikaze Hearts (Blu-ray)

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I think the distributor, Facets, just kind of dropped the ball. Thanks to Jenni Olson at Wolfe Video we’ve got a new distributer, Mike Stimler at Water Bearer Films. For audiences new to the film, it’s easy to be swept up in its surface level and classification as a documentary – a no-holds-barred examination of the adult entertainment industry in its 'golden age' and the experiences of its performers. But in truth, Kamikaze Hearts is significantly more layered than meets the eye. Sharon Mitchell retired as an actress from the adult film industry, and in 1998 she founded the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation, which tested hundreds of adult film performers per month before a 2011 lawsuit led to the clinic’s closure. Her recent interview with The Rialto Report can be heard here.

Juliet Bashore began shooting the film in the mid-1980s. [8] It was filmed on location in North Beach, San Francisco, [11] Embarcadero Freeway, and the Mission District, San Francisco. [12] Release [ edit ] In 1990 she made The Battle of Tuntenhaus, a documentary film about the radical queer squat Tuntenhaus in (then) East Berlin and its conflict with both Neo-Nazis and the German state. In 1992 she made a film that followed the events of the squat since the Battle of Mainzer Straße. The films became an important document about the autonomous scene in Berlin at the time. [7] [8] [9]

Up next is Crash, a short film that Bashore made in 1994. It's a twelve minute selection of excerpts from her attempt at creating a "fictional" Hollywood version of Kamikaze Hearts made in conjunction with the AFI and Shelly Mars. It was shot in a day and meant to be a sketch more than a finished product. The feature version was never made but it's interesting to see the footage here and how very different it is from the original version that inspired it. But the scene in ‘Kamikaze Hearts’… that was a fake photo session, and I was fine with Jerry. I’m just camping it up.

L.A. Weekly wrote in 1991 that the film "drags you to a certain place — the world of lesbian-junkie porn stars — and keeps you there for 80 minutes. If you're excited by that place, or even if you find that place disturbing, you'll like this film because it's so relentlessly inside the world of naked bodies, make-believe, addiction, despair, two-bit sleaze and two-bit dreams." [21] Kamikaze Hearts has been brought to Blu-ray by the British Film Institute, with a fantastic transfer coming from a 2K scan of the original camera negative created by American label Kino Lorber and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. A number of thoughtful bonus features are presented, including an audio commentary with Bashore, Mitchell, actors Jon Martin and Howie Gordon, and performance artist Shelly Mars, and a number of in-depth interviews with Bashore, Mitchell, Martin, and more. Also present is a short film by Bashore called ‘Crash’, which is a sketch of the idea of making Kamikaze Hearts as a fictionalised narrative film. Jon Martin speaks for just under four minutes, side by side with Mitchell, about just doing the work, not needing a script, memories of shooting his first scene in the movie and being uncomfortable with the violence in it, how he wound up in the movie to begin with, and whole a lot of the people they collaborated with who have passed on and, finally, how Sharon Mitchell doesn't get enough credit for her work in the industry. Pearce, Leonard (April 19, 2022). "A Landmark of Queer Cinema is Restored in Exclusive Trailer for Kamikaze Hearts". The Film Stage. Archived from the original on November 23, 2022 . Retrieved November 23, 2022.Thomas, Kevin (April 26, 1991). "Movie Review: Sexual Power Fuels Porno World of 'Kamikaze Hearts' ". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on November 24, 2022 . Retrieved November 24, 2022. Kino brings Kamikaze Hearts to region A Blu-ray on a 50GB disc with the eighty-seven minute feature taking up just under 17GBs of space and framed at 1.33.1 widescreen taken from a new 2k restoration. The picture is gritty and grainy, in keeping with its 16mm origins. Colors look decent and detail is pretty strong, but don't expect reference quality here as it seems pretty obvious that the elements just won't allow for that. What you can expect, is an authentically film-like picture that retains the low budget, DIY style in which the film was made. All in all, this looks good in its way, it suits the tone of the film pretty much perfectly, it just isn't going to offer a pristine viewing experience. Kamikaze Hearts’ depicted the real-life relationship between adult film actresses, Sharon Mitchell and Tigr, and the making of an adult film in San Francisco.

Writing for Another Magazine, James Balmont said that although the lesbian mainstream rejected the film when it was first released, Kamikaze Hearts "remains a milestone in queer cinema." [20] The drug itself functioned as a kind of truth serum. So, in a way, the space, the scene itself, was a confessional. And the camera was the priest.My mother was an aspiring avant-garde playwright, and a snob (in the mold of frustrated artists generally). I was brought up to hate Hollywood and American pop culture and all its “shallowness.” At the beginning of June 1986, I started on a rescue rough-cut edit of ‘Kamikaze Hearts’. Juliet and my then wife, Sharon Hennessy, had recently become friends and they’d spent a couple of months trying to find a way to put her footage together, using the flatbed-editing machine I loaned them. Then they gave up and asked if I’d do it for a small fee. Stephen Lighthill went on to a respected career as Director of Photography in television and documentaries, and is currently the President of the American Society Of Cinematographers (ASC). The film belongs to the frighteningly blank Mitch, who has clearly been turned inside out and torn in the process. A tough cookie who’s also a figure of supreme availability, she embodies the contradictions explored in the film. Moore, Suzanne (1991). Looking for trouble: on shopping, gender, and the cinema. Internet Archive. London: Serpent's Tail. pp.157–159. ISBN 978-1-85242-242-4.