BODY PARTS

HEART | DOCS

US 2022, 86 min, Director: Kristy Guevara-Flanagan

Stunt coordinators prevent injuries on movie sets, but who protects the cast during those vulnerable moments of shooting a “sex” scene? In this wide-ranging primer on the perils of being female in Hollywood, veteran documentary director Kristy Guevara-Flanagan (Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines, MVFF35; What Happened to Her, MVFF39) and producer Helen Hood Scheer interview stars including Jane Fonda and Rosanna Arquette, among others, about their experiences shooting nude scenes for TV and movies. They describe the pressure they’ve felt to get naked on camera and the danger these intimate scenes pose, from predatory scene partners to the endless availability of images on the internet. Deftly illustrated with movie clips stretching back to Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies, Body Parts is part film-history lesson on the dominance of the heterosexual male gaze and part clarion call for employing intimacy coordinators across the industry. It neither shies away from uncomfortable conversations nor ignores imagemakers trying to set a higher, more inclusive bar on set and on screen. —Shari Kizirian

Guests expected: director Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, intimacy coordinator Sarah Scott, producer Helen Hood Scheer