In a variation on what DJs call a “mash-up,” director William E. Jones combines segments of sound from classic foreign language films with non-sexual video segments from gay porn films produced before 1985, making decisions based on segment length rather than their content. The juxtaposition of diverse “found” materials often yields surprisingly appropriate results. V.O. suggests a new narrative space and pays tribute to a former era of gay life and cinephilia.

In an interview with The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Jones says of his pioneering film, “A certain morbid glamour hangs over V.O., a work that serves as an act of mourning for many departed men, a lost gay culture, and orphan films from the archive. I didn’t impose this mood on the material I used; it was already there. An apparently arbitrary intervention – lifting the non-sexual scenes and pairing them with dialogue in foreign languages – reveals how obsessive and dark these movies really were. Years before the AIDS crisis, porn films embodied tendencies contrary to the affirmation and sexual arousal that were their stated aims. They were the harbingers of a sensibility that speaks to these rather grim times.”

The title is an abbreviation for version originale, a French term used to denote films exhibited theatrically in their original languages with subtitles, as opposed to dubbed.

Screening with Sunshine (Jake Yuzma, US, 2007): This autobiographic mix of documentary and stage footage explores an actor’s journey through online encounters as he attempts to find real emotional connections in a world preoccupied with digital socializing.

ADMISSION:  $10 non-member / $8 members