SEX RADICAL
a documentary-drama
Religious conservatives and opportunistic politicians team up to ban books and “protect” children from their corrupting influence. New laws limit access to abortion and contraception, while threatening harsh prison sentences for those who disobey. Marginalized groups are vilified for the sake of “traditional morality.” Sound familiar? Welcome to America in the late 19th-century, under the “Comstock Act.” For over fifty years, this federal law — named for its chief enforcer, Anthony Comstock — explicitly prohibited any information about sex, contraception, or abortion from being sent through the U.S. Mail. But “sex radicals” — outspoken advocates for gender equality, separation of Church and State, and freedom of sexual expression — were determined to test the limits of that law. And some of them, like the marriage reformer and sexual mystic, Ida Craddock, risked everything, just for the right to speak their minds.
Starring Emily Sutton-Smith, this new film by Andy Kirshner is currently in post-production, and is projected for a completion in 2025. Initial development of the project was funded by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan.
Sex reformer Ida Craddock (Emily Sutton-Smith) describes her bright vision of “woman’s future” in Sex Radical.
A dream sequence based on an entry from Ida Craddock’s Diary of Psychic Experiences, 1894.
Ida searches seeks spiritual guidance from the palmist, Madame Tournier (Caroline Helton).
Individualist anarchist, journalist, and “free lover,” Moses Harman (John Lepard), rails against the Comstock obscenity laws.
Malcolm Tulip as William Stead, editor, social reformer, and “psychic investigator.”
Ida finds delight, and sexual enlightenment, in a belly dance at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
Ida’s real-life nemesis, and “special agent” of the U.S. Postal Service, Anthony Comstock.