Happy Tears Comes to Cinekink Festival
Marks Short Film Debut For Author Debra Hyde

Author Debra Hyde is pleased to announce that Cinekink – the really alternative film festival — will debut her short film “Happy Tears: A Vintage Vignette” on Saturday, October 23rd in the 7:00 pm film program. It marks the first time Hyde, better known as an erotica writer and blogger, has tackled a film presentation.

Happy Tears will accompany the feature, “Born in a Barn,” and two other short films, “Spanky! Spanky!” and “Dream Human.” All Cinekink presentations will be shown at the Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Avenue at 2nd Street, New York, New York.

The four-minute vignette takes its material from a flagellation/discipline novel of the same name and believed to have been published in the 1930s.
Called a family idyll, its whippings occur between family members, right down to wicked aunties and naughty cousins getting into the act. For all its bare bottom exposure and ritualized punishments, Happy Tears surprisingly contains no other portrayals of nudity and no sex whatsoever. “It’s all about the discipline,” notes Debra Hyde, the film’s creator.

Today, Happy Tears would be considered an incest novel, a form of erotica now taboo in publishing circles. But Hyde wonders if its family setting was less threatening to the readers of its day because the taboo of non-marital sex was such an absolute back then. “And perhaps because spanking was a commonly accepted parental practice back then, erotic portrayals of so-called family idylls weren’t taboo – at least not to the spankophile,” says Hyde.

Hyde jokes that creating the vignette from the text and illustrations of the novel originated as “an endeavor to put a rather bad bibliophilistic habit to some kind of good use.” She created the film using a home computer video editing application and despite whatever amateurish flaws Happy Tears might have, she hopes to make more shorts in the future. “I’ve got several obscure novels and lots of time on my hands,” she teases.

A well-published erotica and sexuality writer, Debra Hyde’s work can be found in such anthologies as Best Lesbian Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotic, Best S/M Erotica 2 and Naughty Spanking Stories. (And of course, keeper of this blog.)

Each year, Cinekink showcases kink-positive depictions in film and television, covering topics that S/M, leather and fetish, roleplay, swinging, polyamory and non-monogamy, and gender bending. With offerings drawn from both Hollywood and beyond, works presented at CineKink NYC range from documentary to drama, camp comedy to hot porn and everything in between. Cinekink runs from October 21-24, 2004 at the Anthology Film Archives, 32nd 2nd Avenue at 2nd Street, New York, New York. Admission per program is $9; $8 in advance; $6 students and seniors. A kick-off party is scheduled for Thursday evening at the Remote Lounge, 327 Bowery (near 2nd Ave), NYC. A $5.00 donation is suggested.

DEAR READERS, TAKE NOTE: Help me celebrate! I’m having publicity postcards printed. If you’d like me to send you one, email me an appropriate snail mail address. All of which will be kept strictly confidential and will not be sold to anyone, anywhere, nowhere, nohow. Promise.