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Female Desire vs. the Pharmaceutical Industry
New film explores taboo subject
We all know that pharmaceutical companies have some strange and disturbing ads on television. Folksy acoustic guitar music accompanying a smiley suburban scene as a narrator reads the list of side effects: open sores, internal bleeding, a stroke that leads to death, and so on. And although we are aware of the irony and the manipulative tactics of the advertising campaign, the ads are a dominant force in prime time television.
With the pharmaceutical companies holding this bizarre place in mainstream media, Liz Canner has attempted to document corruption within the industry using one of the most universally alluring aspects of humanity: female desire. In her film Orgasm Inc., Canner gets an inside perspective on the development of remedies for a newly discovered “disease,” Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD). The filmmaker was initially working for a pharmaceutical company editing erotic films that were used in the testing of a remedy. These remedies include orgasm-inducing electrodes inserted into the spin, Designer Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation surgery, and “orgasm cream.” Canner received permission from her employers to film a documentary about “the latest scientific thinking of women and pleasure.” What came of the footage was a highly provocative exposé of the pharmaceutical industry.
Liz Canner has experience being at the forefront of expository documentaries concerning hot-button issues. Her film, Deadly Embrace: Nicaragua, the World Bank and the IMF, was the first documentary to look critically at globalization. She is a well-decorated documentarian, having received over 40 awards in her relatively young career, and she was chosen to be the Visionary-in-Residence at Dartmouth College, spring of 2009. Orgasm Inc. is being screened at the Film Society at Lincoln Center on May 27, 6:30pm.
For more information visit www.filmlinc.com.