Who Says Sexploitation Is Dead? Philadelphia Filmmaker To Create An Homage Film In 21 Days

PRLog (Press Release) - Jul 08, 2010 -
Team CrackerHammer, a group of talented filmmakers, artists and actors from the suburbs of Philadelphia, will pay homage to the bygone “sexploitation” era of American filmmaking by creating their own version of  one – a low-budget Doris Wishman-like “sexploitation” film - for the upcoming 2010 Philadelphia-area Project Twenty1 Short Film Competition (http://www.projecttwenty1.com).

Beginning July 31 with the reveal of a “secret element” that every film in the competition must include, Team CrackerHammer, led by Bucks County resident Michael Mercadante, will have just 21 days to complete a short film completely from scratch - scriptwriting to final editing – for the chance to win prizes including “Best Picture.” Completed films, each a maximum of ten minutes in length and submitted by Saturday, August 21, 2010, will receive their world premieres during the Philadelphia Filmathon film festival in Philadelphia October 1-3, 2010.

“Sexploitation” is the term applied to various independent films created in the 1950's and 1960's that drew audiences by promising titillating sex, while actually only delivering nudity and sensuality tame by today’s standards.  One pioneer of this film genre was Doris Wishman, creator of “sexploitation” classics “A Taste of Flesh,”  “Bad Girls Go To Hell” and “Another Day, Another Man.”  Wishman, who wrote and often directed under male pseudonyms because of the sexist restraints of the time, had little budget with which to work, so she often shot silent film because it was cheaper and dubbed the dialogue in later.  She avoided sound synchronization issues by shooting reaction shots (watching the listener rather than the speaker), or using cutaway shots of unrelated scenery.  This has become known as the “Wishman Technique.”  Wishman, who remained an active filmmaker until her death in 2002 at the age of 90, also saved money by shooting movies entirely in her own apartment and using friends and family as actors and crew.

Team CrackerHammer intends to utilize all of these same elements in their short film for the 2010 Project Twenty1 Short Film Competition.  Their very low budget film will be shot on video rather than 35mm film but will be shot, altered and edited to make it look like a vintage 1966 Wishman black and white film. A similar technique was used in 2009 by the production team who created the feature-length “lost blaxploitation” film from 1974 “Black Dynamite” starring Michael Jai White.

Team CrackerHammer is currently researching clothing and hairstyles from the period, scouting indoor shooting locations with vintage furnishings true to the period and shooting test footage to perfect the “vintage film” look.  

“Sexploitation films are generally very tame compared with the content in today's movies and television, but they've been saddled with a term that has such negative connotations,” Mercadante says.  “We're hoping to pay homage to Doris Wishman by resurrecting her filming style, hopefully bringing her films a little more mainstream attention.”

Team CrackerHammer has launched an official website for its 2010 Project Twenty1 Short Film Competition project (http://team.crackerhammer.com), an official Facebook Fan Page and plans to feature a daily video blog documenting its experiences creating its “sexploitation” film also beginning July 31, 2010. The daily video blog will show viewers “HOW TO MAKE A FILM IN TWENTY1 DAYS” and will be posted once a day during the entire twenty-one day short film competition period.