About FILTH!
Placing together queer history and queer presence in Cinema, we ask you to enter and expand the annals of Queer Film. With this series we showcase queer erotica past and present, centralizing queer desire to remind us of our histories. From vintage arthouse pornos, 80s-90s backroom home movies, 00s web boom, and into the tech fueled world of the 2010s to present we contextualize queer desire through multiple lenses. As we fight for physical queer spaces today and find ourselves equipped with cameras/computers in our pockets and generations of underseen queer history at our disposal, where do we go?
*This* is our proposal to you, but let us warn you… it’s FILTHY!
CONTENT WARNING: This event is 18+ and includes themes of: sexual liberation, intimacy, the Universe, fucking, and the nature within us all. This sometimes, but does not always, include visual or audio material that could be labeled "pornographic". We encourage everyone to engage when and how feels right for them while creating space for underseen elements of queer eroticism.
FILTH! First premiered in Chicago in 2023 as a 4 part series. Reel 1 came to Austin in May 2025, marking SEEN’s Texas debut. This fall we bring you reels 2-4 with one screening each month! Join us Oct 18 and (TBA) Nov, as we continue to enter and expand the annals of queer film with our friends at MoHA!
Sliding Scale *PLEASE READ*
All artists have generously agreed to share their work with you despite our inability to guarantee payment. While SEEN believes strongly in community supported and funded work we have yet to find grant or ongoing funding from other sources. Everything you give goes directly to paying artists and our operational costs to meet in a physical space that prioritizes intentional and underground events like this.
Plenty of our screening artists have been deplatformed for promoting this type of work, fight actively to keep legislation from shutting down their operations, or have stepped back from this kind of work because of financial difficulties. We also believe that art and culture should be accessible to all regardless of current material conditions. We ask that you be honest with yourself about what you can afford to give and consider yourself in the broader scope of those impacted by the ongoing colonization, mass neglect, and increased censorship in the US. We want to thrive together and revel in filthy films with you for many years to come, but that is only possible through community contributions.
**If you cannot afford the $10 ticket tier and would like to attend please email seenmovingimage@gmail.com**
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REEL THREE
Dripping with sapphic scenes and autoeroticism, this block focuses on Chicago makers who joined us in our first two screenings of FILTH! and chose to submit their own, showing alongside them are Berlin and London films and clips pulled right from the collections of our friends at BIJOU(world.com) + from deep within The Vault.
FILTH! Reel 3 Current Films:
My Garage My Rules by Manon Praline (she/they) | France/Germany| [10:45]
One more day at work at the girls' garage.
In a play on classic French porn of yesteryear, Lola Tormento goes to get her car fixed but is it really her car engine that is leaking ? She wouldn't have sex on the bonnet of the car with the mechanic would she ?
projection by Anais Alias + Avery Jaye (she/her x2) | Chicago, IL| [05:02]
After seeing, you tell us what you expected, but it's not!! it's a brat, so let's spoil it: who can fill the hole of foreplay? That's not what we were going for. Coming attractions will feature hitchhiking, trans stepkin, maybe some post-porn knifeplay. But this project is kinda fickle. Like our favorite vitamin, kinda fucking around with the unthought known ;)
autoerotic & transfiguration by b. Persei (they/he) | Chicago, IL| [4:18, 6:08]
Self-doubling and junk-expansion for enhanced body/spirit play.
experiments in change; fluctuating states & divine form.
[content warning: needle play, blood]
Everything is ok | an ASMR to help you sleep at night by Autojektor (she/they) | London [4:54]
A destructive collage of trans identities - the brutal marriage of demonisation and fetishisation of othered bodies.
TRT Current Films 00:31:07
FILTH! Reel 3 Clips from The Vault:
Spliced between these contemporary films, we showcase segments of works of decades past that create a throughline of queerness, self expression, and media over decades. The clips are curated to match thematically to the current works. Reel 3’s clips were provided by Chicago’s BIJOU(World.com)
Clips in Reel 3 come from:
Forbidden Dreams - Drea
Born to Raise Hell - Roger Earl
Grease Monkey - Mark Aaron
Plus XXX clips from The Vault!
TRT 00:55:18*
Includes FILTH! And Bijou trailers
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About SEEN
SEEN is a queer coalition of moving image makers, researchers, and curators who aim to disrupt the system of pay to show festivals and censored queer spaces. Through collaboration with other community driven and alternative art spaces, SEEN highlights self defined and nonconformist works to build a foundation for the rise of the Cinematic Gaze/Gayz. Started in Milwaukee, WI (2019) at downtown gallery with a decolonial focus We are, and have always been, a donation centered operation that focuses on self-defined, non-conformist queer work in the underground and without bars to enter. Originally with an additional Scene (as in a sequence in a film) we rebranded in 2021 as the SEEN you know today and released the following manifesto.
what does it mean to be SEEN?
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??????
we REJECT
the standardized SYSTEM of IMAGES
the pacification of the marginalized through the notion of REPRESENTATION as path to LIBERATION
the EXPLOITATION of makers through PAYWALLS, REGULATIONS, and CONFORMITY
and the CENSORSHIP of QUEERNESS and SEXuality
we WELCOME the rise of the cinematic GAZE GAYZ through SELF DEFINED spaces
we are not MONOLITHS
we are not COMPARTMENTALIZED
we are not clear cut NARRATIVES
we do not have to EXPLAIN ourselves to fit within the LENS of cishet white supremacist patriarchal STRUCTURES nor do we need VALIDATION from them for the ways we choose to DEFINE ourselves
we CHALLENGE the passivity of SPECTATORSHIP
we have been taught how to VIEW but we ask you to SEE
we RECOGNIZE moving image as a new VERNACULAR
full of SYMBOLS and CODE, intonations through many LENSES
we PROJECT the light of QUEER DISCOVERY so that we may ABSORB the refractions of knowledge from those before us and ILLUMINATE the path for those to come
we are not just an EVENT
nor are we FETISHES, TOKENS, or SPECTACLES
we are a COALITION to build the foundation for
THE RISE OF THE CINEMATIC GAZE GAYZ
there is so much STRUGGLE and POWER at play in the arena of MEANING
The vitals:
SCREENING 1
Doors 7:15
Show 7:30
End 8:30
SCREENING 2
Doors 8:45
Screening: 9:00
End 10:00
- Enter through the pink door on the Chicon side of 301 Chicon
- Check in at the bar with the last name on your ticket
- Free parking available in the pickleball court parking lot and on the streets
- Email boxoffice@hyperrealfilm.club with any questions
- Refund policy: if absolutely necessary, refunds are available up until 24 hours before showtime. We've got a tiny volunteer team who runs the box office while they're at their other jobs so your patience/flexibility is appreciated 😌
See you at the movies 💛
