A film screening shines light on old topic

The bond between sex and art is like one of longtime lovers. They both often inspire and carry emotion. But “I Want Your Love,” the 2012 debut film from Travis Matthews, demands that its viewers not associate one without the other.

A similar message rang last Thursday, when The New School for Public Engagement’s School of Media Studies screened the film at Tishman Auditorium and held a subsequent panel discussion with the director.

Sex is a large part of the male characters’ lives in this ode to contemporary San Francisco gay culture. Matthews explores the idea of showing real sex on film. But just like a great painting, it is complicated by a storyline and characters.

“I spent most of my life watching gay films where if there is sex involved it’s very similar,” said Matthews. “It is usually all white and usually these particularly toned gym bodies. And I wanted to rebel against that.”

He told Lang media professor Jasmine Rault and New York University professor Tavia N’yongo that his method of rebellion included “mixing people’s real lives with a story that I had written; mixing something that felt at times like a documentary and sometimes like fiction; mixing real sex that might be considered pornographic with an art film kind of sensibility.”

Most of the characters in “I Want Your Love” were named after the actors playing them.

Although it is often difficult to show explicit sex scenes in a film without it automatically being labeled pornography, Matthews hopes that his film will inspire pornographic film producers to invest in projects that aim to redefine the meanings of sex and erotica.

“I was interested in showing all the other ways in which sex can be used to show and discuss character and story development,” Matthews added. “Creating something that would get people off was really about the last thing that was on my mind.”