Las Vegas Weekly

Film and kink collide at CineKink

CineKink returns to the city this weekend at Downtown venue Theatre 7.

Billed as “the kinky film festival,” CineKink has been running in New York City since 2003, and the touring version made its first stop in Las Vegas at the Onyx Theatre last year. Vegas is the perfect place for a festival celebrating sexuality in all its forms, and this year CineKink sets up shop Downtown at Theatre 7 for three days of screenings and discussions. (I’ll be on a panel about sex and cinema along with Las Vegas Weekly columnist and UNLV women’s studies professor Lynn Comella, festival director Lisa Vandever—read our interview with her here—and filmmaker Vivian Darkbloom.)

Programs include the festival’s award-winning short films, as well as other shorts broken into thematic groups dealing with various aspects of sexuality. The weekend closes with the festival’s top two features: narrative prizewinner Indietro follows a suburban couple as they explore a kinky get-together, and documentary Kink Crusaders showcases the International Mr. Leather competition. The only disappointment? No program of excerpts from actual hardcore porn this year; watching that stuff with an audience was an ... experience.