Due to the strong turn out and response to Pay As You Go: An Evening of Sex Workers we have decided to bring the program back in modified form, with a few different shorts. Special panel discussion after the show with Melissa Ditmore and Melissa Gira Grant.

SANGRAM: Sex Work Organizing in India by Audacia Ray & SANGRAM (with support of the International Women’s Health Coalition). (USA & India, 2009, 6 mins, Mini DV)

The Sangli district in the rural south of India has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the country. This health issue has become the crux of a powerful sex workers movement that has risen up over the past twelve years, in which sex workers have become agitators for change in health systems and policy that affects them on the local, national, and international levels. VAMP, the sex work organizing project of the non-profit SANGRAM.

Taking the Pledge by Melissa Ditmore and Erin Siegal (USA, 2007, 13 mins, DVD)

Taking the Pledge features sex workers from Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Mali, Thailand and discussing the problems created by the ‘anti-prostitution pledge’ required to receive funding for HIV prevention from USAID and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). In English, Khmer, Thai, French, Portuguese and Bengali, with English subtitles.

You Must Know About Me by HOPS and WITNESS (Macedonia, 2009, 18 mins)

You Must Know About Me” features interviews with sex workers from Skopje, focusing on 3 main themes: Their family lives, the conditions they work under, especially the violence and discrimination they face from police officials as well as some clients, and lastly, the ramifications of a big raid that happened in November 2008. Several sex workers were arbitrarily arrested, held in detention overnight, forcibly tested for STDs and, to add insult to injury, unwillingly featured in national media that had been tipped off, and was waiting as they exited the clinic.

In Our Own Image by Mandona Productions (USA, 2009, 19 mins, DVD)

What happens when sex workers become not just the subjects of media gaze, but reporters and publishers of sex trade news? This documentary short looks at $pread Magazine, an example of sex worker-made media, and discusses its aim to change the way media itself approaches sex work.

Workin Girl Blues by Damien Luxe (USA, 2009, 4 mins)

An experimental video considering the pluses and minuses of some jobs + a blues song.

Sex Workers (And Proud Of It) by Jean-Michel Carré (France, 2009, Sel.)

In France since 2003, Nicolas Sarkozy has been in charge of national security. Meanwhile, women and men are fighting for the rights to rent freely their body in a political context where the market economy allows through the lens of sexual liberation and with hopes for legalization of commercial intimacy. Stigmatized by moral judgements questioning the relationships of men/women, sexuality and its power, subjects discuss their work and its meaning.

Co-presented by