Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate

Kirby Dick (born August 23, 1952) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor. He is best known for directing documentary films. He received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature for directing Twist of Faith (2005). He has also received numerous awards from film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.

Life and career

Dick studied at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, California Institute of the Arts, and the American Film Institute. His first documentary feature, Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate (1986), enjoyed a successful festival run, and Dick spent the following decade pursuing a variety of projects before completing Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997). Sick examined the life of performance artist Bob Flanagan, who utilized sadomasochism as a therapeutic device to help cope with cystic fibrosis. The film was an international festival hit, winning a Special Jury Prize at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival and helping to establish Dick’s position in the world of independent filmmaking.

Dick’s next film, Chain Camera (2001), was made entirely with footage shot on consumer digital video cameras by students at John Marshall High School, located near Dick’s home in Los Angeles. Many critics saw Chain Camera as an American response to Michael Apted’s Up series. Dick has welcomed these comparisons and has indicated that he would like to eventually direct a sequel that follows up on the same characters as adults.

In 2002, Dick co-directed Derrida with Amy Ziering Kofman. The film, about the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, again performed well at festivals. His next project, Twist of Faith (2005), followed a man who decides to speak out about his childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest. The film garnered widespread attention, as it was released during the midst of the Catholic sex abuse scandal. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Twist of Faith marked the beginning of a politicization of Dick’s work, as his next two films would similarly expose the hypocrisy of powerful organizations. This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006) investigated the Motion Picture Association of America and its secretive ratings board. The film argues that the MPAA serves the interests of the major Hollywood studios at the expense of independent filmmakers and also that the organization often turns a blind eye to violence while working to effectively censor sexual content, especially when it involves homosexuality or female sexual empowerment.

Dick’s most recent film, Outrage (2009), discusses politicians, predominantly Republican, who vote against gay rights – some of whom, Dick alleges, are themselves closeted gays. The film also criticizes the mainstream media’s reluctance to report on this subject.
Themes

Dick’s work often focuses on issues of secrecy, hypocrisy, and human sexuality. Many of his films explore subjects and issues that have traditionally been taboo, such as homosexuality, sadomasochism, and sexual abuse. Ryan Stewart of Cinematical notes that, “Kirby Dick has been compared to photographer Diane Arbus in the way he prefers to open the camera lens to the pained, the freakish and the inexplicable that exists on the margins of everyday life”.

Aesthetically, Dick often employs intricately edited montages that blend together television news clips, archival footage, music videos, documentary interviews, and other sources. Beginning with This Film Is Not Yet Rated, he has also pioneered applying the “fair use” doctrine to appropriate copyrighted footage without the need to obtain licenses or compensate rights holders.

Dick employs a cinéma vérité style of filmmaking. He has said that he prefers to work this way because it allows for a more complex relationship with his subjects. In many cases, Dick has also encouraged his subjects to record their own footage, which is then incorporated into the finished film.

Of all Dick’s films, many are considered to be of the “participatory mode”, in regards to the various documentary modes. Bill Nichols, author of Introduction To Documentary, defines the participatory mode as "direct engagement between the filmmaker and subjects- the filmmaker becomes part of the events being recorded. Some examples include: This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Derrida, Chain Camera, and The End. In each of these films, Dick is either seen interviewing his subjects, accessing information, or instructing his subjects what to shoot. Without Kirby Dick’s influencing participatory documentaries, many films of the same caliber may have not been made. —Wikipedia