Sexy Pigeons on Film
Following on from a brilliant, exciting conversation with Stefania Silvestri of Carwell Casswell productions, the Sexy Pigeons embarked on a new chapter of our project with the goal of producing a short documentary featuring interviews with 18+ women and non-binary people. The interview would be split into two main sections – the first section re-asking questions from a specially selected WRAP interview (different for each participant) and the second asking our own set of devised questions.
Over the past month we have been meeting at Ross and Stefania’s studio in Bermondsey to discuss our goals for this project, potential aesthetic choices and how to bring our ideas to life.
Throughout the whole Cum on Down! series a returning piece of feedback is that participants have felt a missed opportunity to share their personal experiences in more depth, and really explore the nuances and complexities of various topics. We have found participants really engage with the WRAP interviews, but that we were not allowing enough space to develop conversations that arose from reading these transcripts that extended to present-day contexts and conversations – particularly with regards to queer narratives and neurodivergency.
We decided to embark on a mission to document these personal stories, open up the complexities and intricacies of sexuality and identity, as well as breathing more air into the WRAP project by asking the same questions asked in the 1980s within an entirely new timeframe and context. We hoped by giving each participant an hour to talk about their experiences, we would be able to dive much deeper into what each person needed, and to really unpack the destructive impact that poor sex education can have on one’s quality of life. Ultimately this documentary will be a call to arms to change how our sex education is taught in this country, in the hope that future generations are not let down in the same way we were.
Once we got to filming day, we had selected four participants to be interviewed. Our participant call-out attracted a lot of interest, which proved promising for future filming days! Our participants on the day ranged from 19-26. Ross and Stefania were behind the two camera-set up, we used a yellow background in keeping with the Sexy Pigeons colour scheme, and the two of us were sat to the right of the camera, mic’ed up and asking the questions. We were also very generously donated four vibrators by Lovehoney so would like to give them a huge shout out! A common theme of our workshops, in keeping with our playful practice, is to ask participants if they were a vibrator setting what setting they would be that day. We had a table just to the right of participants in shot with a selection of vibrators and began with this question. It resulted in a really beautiful variety of responses, from one participant fairly reluctant to interact with them admitting they weren’t really for her, versus another neurodivergent participant who was delighted to hold each over time as a fidget toy – a reaction entirely unexpected yet beautifully coincidental and helpful for that participant to stay engaged throughout the interview. It also provided the film with a really interesting visual dynamic with pops of colour as well as a reminder of the role of pleasure in our sex lives that is practically entirely left out of sex education.
Quite simply, we had the most wonderful, insightful day of filming. We were able to explore such a huge variety of topics from important relationships to kink, queerness, neurodivergency, drag, sex education, familial relationships, female friendship, constructs of ‘first times’ and virginity and so much more beyond that. It was everything we could have hoped from and more as a critique of the sex education model and how it has impacted people in their adulthood. We cannot wait for the next filming day, and the progression of this project!
Until the next one!
