Analogies

DECONSTRUCTING THE BODY, RECLAIMING THE GAZE

In "ANALOGIES," the gaze turns toward the anus—a symbol of both rejection and desire.

​This is the first ANALOGICAL CINEMA manifesto—raw, exposed, and conceptually deep.

This is not pornography. Not provocation for provocation’s sake.

This is art that confronts the obscene, breaks it apart, and reassembles it...because there is no beauty without freedom.

Welcome to a new manifesto of the body. Dirty, desiring, political, ours.

1

After dismantling one of cinema’s last taboos—the male body—Analogies turns to what the manifesto calls “the most demonized and fetishized territory.” What prompted this shift of gaze toward the anus, and what does it reveal about our collective fears or desires?

Domiziano Cristopharo

After "PHALLACIES," the idea of a sequel like "ANALOGIES" was almost mandatory. It started as a joke between Jon and me—just like how we decided to make the first movie about the penis. Once again, we turned our idea into reality.

I think that if the phallus has been demonized—despite once being used as a symbol and artistic element (both in ancient and modern times)—then the anus suffers from a similar taboo. At the same time, it remains a largely unexplored territory in art and cinema; not many films have dared to address it.

I don’t know exactly what impact working on taboos has on society, but as a creator, I can see from the lack of reactions and support that this kind of work is necessary.

Adam Ford

I made my segment in "PHALLACIES" purely as a provocation (for myself and for the audience) without exploring any deeper meaning. In ANALOGIES, however, I completely changed my approach, creating a direct sequel to my first segment and placing it within a social context about appearance and loneliness. I believe that experiments and provocations are truly valid fields in which ideas can grow.

Jake Valentine

"ANALOGIES" explores a zone of the body and identity that cinema, out of modesty or fear, almost always avoids. This is not a pornographic gesture. It is a way of speaking about vulnerability, shame, and what is deemed unworthy of being seen.

Why should it be unworthy, when we all have an anus and nudity in art has existed for at least 25,000 years: first as a symbol of fertility, then as an ideal of beauty, an object of shame, and finally as a vector of freedom and a way to question the body and society?

Sadly, it is only from the 20th century onward that nudity becomes a tool of provocation, reflection, or liberation. "ANALOGIES" is a collective response to the sterilization of the contemporary gaze. It is a manifesto against the artificial cleanliness of the image and against the fear of the real.

The project is built around a simple yet radical idea: to bring the body, matter, and human fragility back to the center of the visual experience.

2

Whenever a film approaches the obscene, there’s always the risk of being labeled pornographic. How did you navigate that boundary, ensuring that “ANALOGIES” remains an act of liberation rather than mere provocation?

Domiziano Cristopharo

I don’t mind being labeled. People need to label everything. I also don’t think pornography is something negative. Art can be porn, and porn can be art—many artists have proven that. We can use suffering as a theme, no problem; we can use death as a theme, also no problem…so why not sex?

3

Was there a particular moment during production that made you realize what “ANALOGIES” was truly becoming—something beyond what you had initially imagined?

Emanuele Marchetto

The short film changed a lot as I was shooting it. Once it was edited, I realized it was about me more than I had thought. Not so much because of the theme of exhibitionism, but because of the theme of depression: like the character in the short film at the end, I decide to investigate my limits, and this allows me to escape (temporarily) from a depressive state that was previously ever-present.

Pete Lankston

When we were making "PHALLACIES," I think we all felt that we were doing something both taboo and daring, and we expected some backlash—and attention. What I didn’t expect was that the film would so strongly reflect our unique, individual voices, and that we’d be given the artistic freedom to truly explore them.

With "ANALOGIES," the same thing happened. I didn’t initially consider that this project could involve elements of exploitation and horror, but that it would also, once again, give voice to that very private and personal part of all our bodies—the place where horror and emotion can be found and explored in ways rarely expressed or shown on film.

4

In an anthology film with different directors and visions, the challenge is often coherence: how did you weave together such disparate tones—from the grotesque to the lyrical, the digital to the intimate—while preserving a unified spirit or discourse?

Domiziano Cristopharo

Well, I personally think that with a strong common theme like the anus, the different visions of each artist are essential to demonstrate—as "PHALLACIES" perfectly did—that the same subject or object can be told as part of a narrative in its own unique way. In some anthologies, exaggerated differences can sometimes become a weakness, but in this case, they become a real strength.

5

In an era dominated by digital mediation and sanitized imagery, “ANALOGIES” reclaims a raw, physical aesthetic. What does this gesture mean to you politically and artistically—and what do you hope it awakens in viewers?

Tibor Astor

In my segment, I worked within the territory of dreams, trying to use the human body as visual poetry and, quite literally, as a map. After my debut film "FIST" (which is actually about fisting), Domiziano thought I was a perfect fit for the "ANALOGIES" collection. But instead of reiterating myself in the explicit way I did in my feature, I experimented with a language made of more suggestive images, trying to make the male anus something pleasurable to see.

Jake Valentine

My segment, Defiled, fully embodies this approach as well. Within the context of "ANALOGIES," the film becomes—like its predecessor—a study on censorship: on the way society chooses what can exist visually and what must be repressed. Where technology homogenizes and erases, "ANALOGIES" reclaims the grain, the scar, the trace.

Politically, the entire project rejects the moralization of the body and the image. Artistically, it celebrates disorder, disturbance, the organic—everything that escapes control. "ANALOGIES" pushes this logic to the extreme: it confronts the viewer with the most vulnerable zone of the human being, not to provoke, but to reintegrate the taboo into an artistic space—to restore its symbolic dignity of the past.

What I hope, through "ANALOGIES," is to awaken a consciousness: that beauty does not reside in perfection, but in the courage to look at what disturbs—to find a form of truth there, to attach oneself to it, or to recognize oneself within it.

6

The film speaks of exposure—physical, emotional, political. What did that exposure demand of you personally, as artists and collaborators?

Jon Devlin

Exposure demanded that I throw modesty, dignity, and probably common sense straight out the window. It wasn’t just about showing skin, it was about dragging every shame soaked corner of myself into the light and saying, ‘Yeah, this is me too.’ That’s not comfortable. It’s not supposed to be. We weren’t here to make something polite or palatable.

We were here to peel ourselves open and see what spilled out. And sometimes what spills out is ugly, horny, sacred, pathetic, and often all at once. If people squirm, good. That means we hit a nerve. I’d rather make them uncomfortable with the truth than let them stay cozy in a lie.

7

After “PHALLACIES” and now “ANALOGIES,” you’ve stripped cinema of much of its moral armor. Where can extreme or experimental cinema go from here? Is there a “next taboo” you feel compelled to confront—or is the next step to push even further into the territory of liberation and exposure?

Domiziano Cristopharo

I hope that we open a hole in the wall—for people and other artists. But I know it is a slow process. I don’t want to appear arrogant, but when I made movies like “House of Flesh Mannequins” or “Hyde’s Secret Nightmare” 17 years ago, using real porn inside horror films (nothing new—D’Amato did it long before me), all the festivals, audiences, and even colleagues were bullying me.

Then, when they saw that my movies were still “around” years later while theirs were forgotten, many started to use extreme nudity in indie films instead of trying to emulate Hollywood.

After my "eROTik", too—labeled as the most explicit movie about necrophilia—we saw an increase in explicit necrophilia scenes in indie films. Those are welcome if we normalize freedom of expression. Personally, I try not to repeat someone else’s work, or even my own, but I try to keep finding new lands to explore.

At the same time, I developed "ANALOGIES." With Jon, we also created the "TOETAG" anthology, about feet. In this case, we wanted to focus on an anatomical part that is not banned at all, cannot be censored, and is not considered obscene—but which, at the same time, we know is a sexual fetish for many.

Here's below the links where you can find and support the 'ANALOGIES' project online:

ANALOGIES - BACK DOOR