CineKink NYC, the annual kinky film festival, is seeking submissions from filmmakers for its 2022 season, to take place in May. According to their call for entries:
Cutting across orientations, topics covered at CineKink have included — but are by no means limited to — BDSM, leather and fetish, swinging, non-monogamy and polyamory, roleplay and gender bending, sex work and sex geekery. We’re looking to blur some boundaries and will consider offerings of any length and genre drawn from both the independent film world and the adult, with works ranging from documentary to drama, camp comedy to artsy experimental, mildly spicy to quite explicit — and everything in between.
According to a statement from CineKink co-founder and director Lisa Vandever, “Basically, as long as it involves consenting adults, just about anything celebrating sex as a right of self expression is fair game. Far be it from us to define ‘kink.’ If you think your work might make sense in this context, please send it along – just make sure it has something to do with sex!”
The film festival was founded in 2003, and “recognizes and encourages the positive depiction of sexuality and kink in film and television, most visibly through its annual film festival, CineKink NYC.” The festival also includes an awards component, and has traditionally toured cities including Oakland, Toronto, Portland, and Chicago prior to the pandemic.
Vandever told the Chicago Reader in 2019 of planning CineKink’s selections, ““At some miraculous point, out of what seems like an amorphous, random grouping of films, themes begin to emerge. And, balancing various orientations and proclivities, our festival schedule comes together.”
Today, January 17 is the regular deadline for submissions, with February 7th, the late deadline; submission fees increase at each tier. The final extended deadline to submit films for consideration for CineKink 2022 is February 28th for works submitted online only.
In 2019, Filmmaker Magazine interviewed Jennifer Lyon Bell, recipient of the first CineKink Artist Spotlight Award, about the honor. Bell said:
I’m so touched by CineKink’s decision to offer me this award. I truly have grown as a filmmaker with this festival, since I’ve been screening there since my very first film. Lisa is a discerning programmer and it means a lot to me when she sees value in my work.
I especially appreciate that she has valued some of my odder cinematic moments. Several film festivals wanted Silver Shoes, but only CineKink was especially interested in the odd little sad/liberating piece Silver Shoes/Housesitter, in which AnnaBelle rifles through her lost lover’s possessions and eventually lies on their bed and weeps while she masturbates. I hadn’t seen heartbreak masturbation in a film before, and it felt very realistic to me. I appreciated that Lisa could see what I did.
The festival has featured a wide range of documentary and fictional films. Below is a clip from CineKink 2015 featuring members of Club 90, an adult film star support group founded in 1983. The below clip features Veronica Hart, Gloria Leonard, Candida Royalle, Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Vera.