Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography is a Canadian documentary film about the pornography industry, directed by Bonnie Sherr Klein and released in 1981.[1]
Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography | |
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Directed by | Bonnie Sherr Klein |
Written by | Andrée Klein Bonnie Sherr Klein Irene Lilienheim Angelico Rose-Aimée Todd |
Produced by | Dorothy Todd Hénaut Mark L. Rosen |
Starring | Lindalee Tracey Bonnie Sherr Klein |
Cinematography | Pierre Letarte |
Edited by | Anne Henderson |
Music by | Ginette Bellavance Sylvia Moscovitz |
Production company | National Film Board of Canada Studio D |
Distributed by | National Film Board of Canada Esma Films |
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Running time | 69 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
It remains one of the landmark works from Studio D, the women's unit of the National Film Board of Canada. The film was banned in the province of Ontario on the basis of its pornographic content, a decision that was later reversed.[2][3]
The film premiered at the 1981 Festival of Festivals.[1]
Film-maker Bonnie Sherr Klein and stripper (later journalist) Lindalee Tracy explore the world of pornography and build a case against it.[2] They interview porn actors, sex workers and notable feminists such as Margaret Atwood and Kate Millett.[4]
At the time, the local Canadian reviewers were hostile. The Globe and Mail called the film "bourgeois feminist fascism" and the Toronto Star judged it to be "a one-sided tract of outrage that only feminists and moral majority believers will take to their bosom".[5] Writing in the Village Voice, B. Ruby Rich dismissed the film as anti-porn propaganda.[6]
Later reviewers and analysts have criticised the film for relying upon graphic sexual imagery, for focusing upon sex work rather than the porn industry and for not differentiating between straight and gay porn.[6]
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