Hosted by Annie Rose Malamet (W/ director Juliet Bashore and lead actress Sharon Mitchell in person for a post-screening Q&A)
Alternately distressing, instructive, contestable, and fascinating, Juliet Bashore’s quasi-documentary plunge into the 1980s porn industry takes an unsparing look at issues of misogyny, drug abuse, and exploitation via the story of two women—the naive newcomer Tigr and her partner, the magnetic, imperious porn veteran Sharon Mitchell — caught in a toxic romance.
By turns mesmerizing and unsettling, Kamikaze Hearts is both a fascinating record of pre-gentrification San Francisco’s X-rated underground and an intense, searing love story. The film offers a disturbing glimpse of the modification of bodies, feelings, and lives. (Kino Lorber)
About the director:
Juliet Bashore is an American filmmaker. She is best known for her award-winning feature film Kamikaze Hearts, a pseudo-documentary set in the Golden Age of Porn in San Francisco.
About the star:
Sharon Mitchell is an American sexologist and former pornographic film actress and director. In 1998, she founded the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation.
About the host:
Annie Rose Malamet is an internationally recognized lesbian vampire expert, freelance film writer, and perverted aesthete. She is the creator of the popular podcast Girls, Guts, & Giallo, where she examines controversial and subversive cinema through the lens of queer leather and sex work history and sensibilities. Annie has lectured and presented work at festivals and colleges in both the United States and Europe. She has appeared as a cultural expert in the Shudder documentary Queer for Fear, the PBS show Historian’s Take, and on BBC Radio 4. Her essays and reviews have been in various publications over the last decade. She has contributed essays and audio commentary for special editions released through Second Sight, Severin Films, and Vinegar Syndrome.