Fantastic Fest 2008

Check out all the films in this year's Pink Retrospective. Click here for a show listing.

A young girl, already a jaded sexual veteran, embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery to find out the true reasons for her dissatisfaction and total desensitization. This parable is told in a jagged avant-garde style that must have baffled the target audience of businessmen seeking cheap thrills on their lunch hours.

GUSHING PRAYER begins with an extended group sex scene in which the story's young protagonist, Yasuko, is very much the centerpiece. As she lies beneath the thrusts of an enthusiastic adolescent classmate, her friends call on her anxiously from the sidelines "Can you feel it? What does it feel like?" Yasuko however, confesses to feeling nothing, in fact appearing frozen to all feeling. And so, on the threshold of womanhood, with all the weight of adult expectation and responsibility which that entails upon her, upon the goading encouragement of her peers, she sets out on an odyssey of self-exploration in search of complete sexual satiation. (Jasper Sharp)

Jasper Sharp, pink film scholar and author of the new Fab Press book "Behind The Pink Curtain - The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema" will be in attendance to introduce the film. Expect to learn a lot about this shadow world of Japanese film culture.

Very special thanks to Marc Walkow of Outcast Cinema for crucial programming and logistical assistance.