"I remember watching this, stoned, while at university, and I think you kind of have to be stoned to watch it, because it’s so psychedelic and weird. I’ve always had a fascination with Jim Morrison and regularly I ask myself: “What would a female Jim Morrison do in this moment?”, because I like his commitment to the moment as a performer, and his shameless expression of his sexuality, which, as a woman, I think is a nice thing to exploit. I don’t know how I would feel watching this film now, not being stoned, but at the time it seemed like a really romantic portrayal of a poetic artist."

"I remember the impact Lucrecia Martel’s debut feature had on film students, critics, and fellow filmmakers. It was released on one single 35 mm print in Brazil, and that was shredded over a period of a year after playing in just about all noncommercial movie theaters around the country. I love everything about this film: the obliqueness of it, the fresh and bold take on sexuality, the use of sound, the faces and bodies. It was also quite a reference for a filmmaker like me, who like Martel believed films could be about people interacting with a certain feeling of space and time, mediated by cinema itself."

"Camille Paglia is one of the most controversial feminists of all time, and also one of the most compelling. This mammoth book, put very shortly, examines the representation of sexuality in Western art. But it also goes into fierce discussion about religion, literature, art history, psychology, the brutal forces of sex and nature, and the amorality and pornography present in great art. As someone who personally writes a lot about sex work, one of my favorite lines in the book is, “The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture.”"

"Horrors and desire, death and lust go hand in hand in Onibaba and Kuroneko, a perverse, sweaty double bill from Kaneto Shindo. I saw these two films at age ten, and they did some serious damage to my psyche. Both are perfect fables rooted in Japanese folklore but distinctly modern in their approach to violence and sexuality. As exuberant and exquisite as a netsuke carving, these atmospheric jewels show mankind trapped in a cosmically evil world. The tales seem to fit together so perfectly that they fuse into one as time goes by. Onibaba and Kuroneko make a perfect double bill for the second circle of hell."

"Horrors and desire, death and lust go hand in hand in Onibaba and Kuroneko, a perverse, sweaty double bill from Kaneto Shindo. I saw these two films at age ten, and they did some serious damage to my psyche. Both are perfect fables rooted in Japanese folklore but distinctly modern in their approach to violence and sexuality. As exuberant and exquisite as a netsuke carving, these atmospheric jewels show mankind trapped in a cosmically evil world. The tales seem to fit together so perfectly that they fuse into one as time goes by. Onibaba and Kuroneko make a perfect double bill for the second circle of hell."