First Annual Los Angeles Fetish Film Festival celebrates the worldwide
fetish movement 

Hollywood, California – April showers may bring an abundance of glowing
color to the Southland, but the three day Los Angeles Fetish Film
Festival [http://losangelesfetishfilmfestival.com], held Thursday, April
14 through  Saturday, April 16, 2011, promises to eclipse nature’s vivid
display with performance art and cinematic competition with a decidedly
darker edge. 

Featuring an eclectic selection of fetish films and imagery, this year’s
competition includes the West Coast premier of director Vivian
Darkbloom’s CineKink Award winning feature, ‘Indietro’. All will be
showcased amid delightfully depraved venues, filled with live
performance, photographic art galleries and hedonistic pursuits. 

This dark journey of visual delights begins Thursday with a grand
opening party at Club Monte Cristo, as guests preview the entries
competing for the Los Angeles Fetish Film Festival’s top awards. Naked
Catering will provide a selection of decadent goodies to sate the hunger
of even the most ravenous night denizen, as the performance stage
explodes with wicked explorations of fetishism, bondage and suspension
by Sex and Metal and the Nylon Girls, culminating in cash prizes for
those most elegantly bedecked in their fetish best.

Friday becomes more intimate, with an exclusive private party to let the
festival contestants play the night away, before the Los Angeles Fetish
Film Festival moves toward its glorious culmination on Saturday April
16, with a full day of screenings beginning at noon. Winners will be
announced and presented with their trophies at the Awards show, held at
Bar Sinister in Hollywood. The final evening will begin with a red
carpet arrival to the awards venue, honoring the Fetish Divas, Dominants
and submissives that fill the shadowed fantasy world of the fetish film
movement. After the paparazzi has lit the night fantastic, the party
will continue indoors, going deeper and darker into the night, weaving
audio and visual dreams while a Fetish Fashion Show and performance
troupe Sex and Metal and burlesque diva, Olivia Bellafontaine
(pictured), bring the festival to an excruciating crescendo. 

Simmons said, "This festival is Southern California’s gateway to the new
wave of entertainment. The imagery that is defined as ‘fetish’ has
become the spice people have yearned for to wake up their jaded
cinematic palates. You see it in commercials for the Cosmopolitan hotel
in Vegas, it pops up in Conan O’Brien’s monologs, as a recurring theme
on CSI, and it is a rising force in all forms of entertainment. Everyone
has a fetish. If you think you don’t then you just haven’t found yours
yet! This is our first festival and I plan for it to grow bigger each
year, as people embrace this element of their own personalities. I am
very grateful to not only the directors and producers of these films and
videos, but also to the performers, sponsors and my hardworking crew,
who have stepped up to make our debut event everything I imagined it
could be."

Confirmed judges for the festival are Simmons, a director and producer
in his own right, fashion fetish photographer Alejandra Guerrero,
publisher Erik von Gutenberg, fetish photographer Eric Kroll, film
producer and director, Master Liam, Dr. Susan Block and Bellafontaine.
Sponsors for the first annual Los Angeles Fetish Film Festival include,
American Fetish, LA Decadence, Bizzy B and KinkEvents.

Advance tickets are available online through the official website,
losangelesfetishfilmfestival.com. A limited amount of tickets will be
available at the door for those wishing to attend the official awards
ceremony on Saturday, April 16.   

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About Los Angeles Fetish Film Festival:
Founded in 2011 by movie director Michael Simmons, this event celebrates
not only film and video makers that are creating entertainment
concerning erotic visual presentations of fetishistic themes, but also
mixes in performance art that is also themes to stimulate the senses by
exploring fetish, bondage, BDSM and other aspects that are viewed as
"fetish". But what is "fetish"?  Fetish is sometimes defined as
animating an inanimate object, breathing life into something that didn’t
previously live or breathe.  It is pure projection, ‘observer created’
sensual objectification.  And of course, it is often erotic, which is
the focus of the Los Angeles Fetish Film Festival.

About Michael Simmons:
Michael Simmons is a movie director who has worked under various names
in the adult industry, and has spent the last four years focusing on
launching the production company American Fetish Films, which focuses on
films with an erotic noir flavor. His first release under this new
production label is the fetish noir tinged, psychological horror feature
film, "American Fetish."