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Erotic Awards News

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July 08
Erotic Awards is putting a proposal to Thames and Hudson for a book on 20 years of our work, to be published in 2013.

June 08
Erotic Awards secures gallery for our exhibition – The Jago Gallery in trendy Hoxton, has agreed to hold our exhibition 3rd-10th September on the ground floor. This new wheelchair accessible gallery is open from noon-midnight and has a licensed bar and space beneath where pole dancing lessons and other happenings take place.

June 08
Erotic Awards welcomes Love Shack UK as sponsor. www.loveshackUK.com

May 08
Jaime Bautista, founder of SMart (Socially Marginalised Art) is invited to curate the Exhibition.
(More info about SMart here: http://www.vaengland.org.uk/uploaded/map4399.pdf)

May 08
SHOWCASE is a massive success and £1,000 is donated by Malcolm Pearce of Johnson's of Bath.

May 08
J.A.M. Montoya's photographic prints from our exhibition sold – two of the prints brought over from Spain have sold for £250, and there is promise of more sales.

March 08
Portrait photographer Jonathan Root joins the Erotic Awards Team of Judges.

News about Finalists

June 08
Chiqui (Striptease Artist 2006) strips in front of 40,000 people at The Life Ball, AIDS fund-raiser in Vienna and joins the editorial team at the Erotic Review.

June 08
Jean-Daniel Cadinot (Film-maker 2006) dies of a heart attack.

     Read Jean-Daniels Obituary

DANNY CORVINI wrote: French porn director Jean-Daniel Cadinot once said that while his parents, both tailors, were in the business of clothing men, he earned his reputation undressing them.

Cadinot died of a heart attack on April 23, at the age of 64, and with 66 films to his name. He would have continued to create more beautiful pornography if he'd lived longer, says Cadinot's representative James Coates, who also says that Cadinot was working on a screenplay about a gay Indiana Jones in Tunisia's Roman ruins when he died.

"Daniel was always unsatisfied with his work and, like many artists, always had his doubts," reveals Coates, in a burst of typically French-style analysis. The period after a significant boyfriend's tragic death in 1986, for instance, left Cadinot unhappy with his films. Yet many scenes were autobiographic, says Coates. "L'Amour Jaloux revealed parts of his personal love stories," he says, adding that after the death of his lover, filmmaking became Cadinot's best friend.

Each Cadinot film featured an army of gorgeous French and North African men, although none of them were ever 'porn stars', nor did they go on to attain such status. While his website still has a casting call for models aged 18 to 28 years, most of the actors he used - and he used a different set for each film - approached him seeking a role. "We put ads in one or two magazines but most of the time they saw a film and contacted us directly," says Coates. Unlike many others involved in the industry, Cadinot would rarely have sex with an actor - unless, of course, they were particularly interested in him.

Coates thinks that Cadinot's technique can be seen in gay productions today: "George Duroy told him he (got his style from Cadinot) when they met for the first time in Paris last year," he says. "We've also seen many other films that reminded us of Cadinot films: Russel T Davies cited Service Actif 1 and 2 as must-sees for eroticism in the original (and best) Queer as Folk."

Cadinot's camerawork was considered to be obsessively voyeuristic, and he upset critics when he filmed a rape scene in in Les Minets Sauvages, in which actor Didier Hamel played a painfully shy loner who gets gang-raped at a boys' school. But fantasies cannot be explained, insists Coates: "Some people love it, others hate it. The point is that in some countries some Cadinot films could not be sold officially because of non-consensual sex and Daniel always refused to cut even a second to comply with the censors. He always wanted to show human nature just the way it is - without compromise."

Cadinot never particularly enjoyed citing a personal favourite from his 66-strong film collection, but Coates is nostalgic about the fresh late-teen appearance of the early films. "Today's boys look more mature," he says. "Sexuality and gayness have evolved tremendously over the years, and the boys look less shy and candid than they did before. Dialogue and gesture have become more crude and to try and make models behave just as they did in the '80s would be ridiculous or anachronistic. I have fond memories of Crescendo and Secrets de Famille. With these two films, we had the chance to bring together all the cast in one location. We all lived together for three weeks for each film. There was a lot of fun and friendliness, and some extra scenes off-camera which I will always remember."

Like Pauline Hanson, who recorded an "If you are watching this, I am dead" video at the height of her unpopularity, Cadinot wrote a letter entitled "My Final Bow" to post on his website when he died. In the letter he writes: "I leave you with a free mind and a head overflowing with a myriad of young men, sometimes strong and vigorous, sometimes fragile and sensitive. All of them gave me these unforgettable moments of their most tender intimacy, moments that only a few really know but which I made into images to allow you to admire them over and over again." He goes on to describe himself as "an extreme observer" who was "full of love".

He was full of love but his heart was weak, says Coates: "He had already suffered several heart attacks, the last being last year. He was too energetic and nervous - and this must have killed him," he says.
www.cadinot.fr

May 08
The Pleasure Project (Campaigner 2005) publishes its 2nd Edition of The Global Mapping of Pleasure, downloadable on http://www.thepleasureproject.org./section6

May O8
Kinky Salon's Justin Allen (Club 2008) holding Dossie Easton workshops in London

Following a sold-out taster workshop in May, the legendary Dossie Easton returns to London in September to lead a 2-day intensive in Radical Ecstasy. This remarkable workshop brings together BDSM and tantra and has never been taught before in England.

Over the course of a beautiful weekend Dossie unlocks the potential of BDSM as a sacred practice. This 2-day intensive gives participants an in-depth experience of this extraordinary work. Dossie will share her many decades of expertise using an experiential approach.

Dossie writes: We are planning to journey to the intersection of BDSM and tantra, which Janet & I have written about in our book Radical Ecstasy. We will start with basic exercises, breath and safety, then move onto connection and ecstatic practice. All exercises have a range of possibilities suitable for newcomers and experienced players; for intimates, and for total strangers. Our focus is on energy, connection, transcendent states of consciousness.

Radical Ecstasy is taking place on Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st September. This remarkable event will sell out in advance – almost half the places are already taken. If you would like to find out more please visit www.DossieEastonLondon.com; or download a call for participants at:
http://www.dossieeastonlondon.com/radx_call.doc

May 08
Backlash (Campaigner 2006) and Spanner Trust (Derek Cohen was Campaigner 2007) lose battle to protect Extreme Pornography as it becomes illegal in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2008. Deborah Hyde and her team put in an enormous amount of work and continues to campaign – see www.backlash-uk.org.uk

April 08
Maria Beatty gains more awards for her Silken Sleeves, (Independent Film 2007)
Cine Kink Film Festival NYC, prize Best Experimental Feature Film 2008 (USA); Pioneer Theater, NYC, January 2008 (USA); and Barcelona International Erotic Film Festival; prize Best Director 2007 and Best Domme 2007 (Spain)

March 08
Lily Dumont (Performance Artist 2006) accepted onto the Masters course to study Sexual Dissidence at the University of Sussex.

February 08
Eleni Stephani (Outsiders Award 2006) wins Volunteer of the Year award in Islington.

January 08
Tania Glyde (Midnight SexTalk - Innovation 2005) has her latest book published and serialised in the Sunday Times – Cleaning Up, How I Gave Up Drinking And Lived is published by Serpent's Tail.
See www.taniaglyde.com and www.amazon.co.uk

January 08
Maria Beatty’s Silken Sleeves (winner Independent Film 2007) won best experimental feature film at the CineKink Film Festival in NYC, and won Best Director and Best Domme at the Barcelona International Erotic Film Festival in 2007.

January 08
Katie Wiltshire (Playshop – Event 2007) appointed development officer for the Outsiders West Country Group

December 07
Michael Forbes (Artist 2007) exhibited with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Damian Hurst in I'm in the Mood for Pop at the Opera Gallery, Bond Street, London.

November 07
Desire Magazine (Publication 2002) bought by Trojan Publishing, with Ian Jackson and Lesley Ann Sharrock staying as editors.

September 07
Sarah Vernon, aka Gypsy Charms (Campaigner 2007 and Striptease Artist 2005), succeeds in getting ban on striptease dropped in Scotland.

August 07
Disabled activist and writer Penny Boot (Outsiders Award 1999) performs a striptease at the Edinburgh Festival.

June 07
Alan Cassidy, who created the fetish website What'sYours.com (Website 2001), met his wife at the Night of the Senses and together they set up Coffee Cake and Kink (Innovation 2004) and are now currently struggling to keep the lease in this prestigious Covent Garden location.

October 06
Ebony Pru (Sex Worker 2006) spoke at the Different Strokes AGM in London about doing work with disabled clients, and the TLC site she has set up to that end.

March 06
Bob Carlos Clarke (Shooting Sex, Publication 2005) ended his life by running in front of train at a level crossing near Barnes in London.