The Summer of Skin at P3 Annihilation Eve

As the government decides that they need to verify precisely who you are in order to see erotic imagery on the internet, Paraphysis Cinema are taking a refreshingly old school approach. With Summer of Skin, the queer pop-up community cinema is partnering with P3 Annihilation Eve and taking over the Ancoats venue’s basement for a seasonal programme of hardcore cinema introduced by Holly Rowley, a film programmer and historian specialising in the erotic image.

The season is a fascinating mix of landmark underground and experimental hardcore films that often push aesthetic and political boundaries. The selection of work on show was mostly produced in the 1970s during what is known as The Golden Age of Porn, a period inaugurated by Andy Warhol’s 1969 Blue Movie during which there was serious critical and artistic interest in the work. It was also a time in which mainstream depictions of queer sexuality on screen were rare, and rarer still were depictions from actual queer filmmakers — who found an arena of expression in pornography.

Looking back today, there’s a sense of discovering a hidden world, and while it’s tempting to emphasise the academic, socio-political value of understanding the historic fantasies on screen, these are also entertaining, dark and, yes, erotic films that are also to be viewed for spectacle and pleasure. At the time of writing the season is half-way through and Paraphysis have already screened notorious arthouse director Abel Ferrara’s debut 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy, in addition to a double bill of Wakefield Poole’s psychedelic Bijou and the recently rediscovered Sex Demon.

There are still two months of screenings to go though. Next up on Wednesday 20 August is New York filmmaker Radley Mertzer’s 1974 Score, set in the mythical European city of Leisure where swinging married couple Jack and Elvira pick up and seduce a pair of newlyweds as part of an ongoing bet. Paraphysis praise this porno chic classic as one of the first to “treat bisexuality with moral neutrality and wit” while lush 35mm location shooting on the Dalmation coast adds a certain level of production value.

The final event of Summer of Skin is a double bill of films from legendary figure Fred Halsted (Wed 17 Sept). Perhaps the most well known title in the season, the 1972 experimental gay hardcore L.A. Plays Itself contrasts a tender idyllic scene of two men outside of Los Angeles with sequences of cruising, ad pick ups and pickups that depict sex far more brutal and exploitative.

That’s shown alongside Halsted’s Sextool a journey into L.A.’s sadomasochistic underbelly that New York’s Museum of Modern Art describes as both “astonishingly progressive” and “one of the most ambitious and least successful pornographic films ever made”.