This is an update to a post last month that got a lot of interest...
The timely new "buzz-worthy" documentary film ORGASM INC. about the pharmaceutical industry's search for a female Viagra from director Liz Canner and Chicken & Egg Pictures will have its Los Angeles festival premiere this coming Saturday, June 12 at the New Media Film Festival at the Downtown Independent, the state-of-the-art film and event venue.
ORGASM INC. offers a "look inside the medical industry and the marketing campaigns that are literally and figuratively reshaping our everyday lives around health, illness, desire -- and that ultimate moment: orgasm." The film has been popular on the festival circuit drawing attention at the biggest documentary festivals including HotDocs in Toronto and IDFA in Amsterdam, and it reportedly sold out its premiere last month at The Film Society of Lincoln Center.
NEWSWEEK wrote recently that Orgasm Inc. "is a desperately needed antidote to all the hype generated by pharmaceutical companies pursuing their holy grail: a female Viagra."
MORE Magazine says Orgasm Inc. "questions whether women’s sexual problems really need pharmaceutical cures."
According to the film's website (www.orgasminc.org):
In the shocking and hilarious documentary ORGASM INC., filmmaker Liz Canner takes a job editing erotic videos for a drug trial for a pharmaceutical company. Her employer is developing what they hope will be the first Viagra drug for women that wins FDA approval to treat a new disease: Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD). Liz gains permission to film the company for her own documentary. Initially, she plans to create a movie about science and pleasure but she soon begins to suspect that her employer, along with a cadre of other medical companies, might be trying to take advantage of women (and potentially endanger their health) in pursuit of billion dollar profits. ORGASM INC. is a powerful look inside the medical industry and the marketing campaigns that are literally and figuratively reshaping our everyday lives around health, illness, desire — and that ultimate moment: orgasm.
ORGASM INC. trailer:
Any context for all this? Yeah, U.S. News and World Report has an intriguing analysis of a controversial new drug campaign that one expert says is "priming the market" ahead of an apparent FDA review next month.
Here's info about the non-profit that supported Canner's work:
Chicken & Egg Pictures is a hybrid film fund and non-profit production company dedicated to supporting women filmmakers who are as passionate about the craft of storytelling as they are about the social justice, environmental and human rights issues they’re embracing, translating and exploring on film. We match strategically timed financial support with rigorous, respectful and dynamic mentorship, creative collaboration and community-building to nurture women filmmakers whose diverse voices represent a range of lived experience and realities that have the power to change the world as we know it.