About the Film

BDSM: It’s Not What You Think! confronts stigma and stereotype surrounding kink and fetish play through leading voices within the BDSM community. With intimate interviews and playful vignettes this film targets progressive outsiders and guides them through the minefield of misconceptions and prejudice that kinksters must routinely face.

BDSM: It’s Not What You Think! was conceived as a student film project for an innovative interdisciplinary course at San Francisco State University (SFSU). Bringing together public health and cinema students, the class was designed to wed the power of digital filmmaking with the cause of social justice.

The semester prior to the inception of the course, students from the Masters in Public Health (MPH) program submitted proposals for film projects related to public health and social justice. The proposals reflected extensive research on progressive social issues, with significant health implications. Five of the proposals were selected and served as the core for the inception of SFSU’s “Documentary Filmmaking for Social Justice” course.

Work on the film began in earnest when the first class convened and the public health students pitched their film topics to a pool of upper division film students.

Brad Vanderbilt, a second year MPH student at SFSU, had been reviewing academic literature addressing the impact of shame, stigma and oppression on individual and community health. His research explored Western culture’s long history of pathologizing alternative sexuality from feminism and gay liberation to Sado-Masochism.

By the end of the first class co-filmmakers Wade Keye, Erin Palmquist and R. Trent Walton were inspired by Vanderbilt’s pitch and the “kinksters confronting stigma” group, a.k.a, the “K-Team,” was born.

The class emphasized that clearly defining a target audience in the pre-production phase was crucial to the effectiveness of any socially responsible film. With the aim of breaking down common misconceptions about BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, and Sado-masochism) in mind, the filmmakers chose to focus on a target audience of “progressive outsiders” to the BDSM community.

Included within this target demographic were a range of people, from those with a casual awareness of leather/fetish sexuality to people who had never been exposed to BDSM but were open to learning about it.

An extensive effort at community consultation and audience research helped the filmmakers establish the foundation for their film. The filmmakers conducted surveys with members of the target audience to determine common misconceptions and to address their comfort level regarding the general subject of BDSM and the viewing of certain elements in BDSM practice.

The filmmakers also continued to listen carefully to voices from the BDSM community. An important aspect of the filmmaking process was a deep commitment that the film accurately reflect the concerns, challenges and strengths voiced by the community that the filmmakers were seeking to represent.

They hoped that in taking part in the film project, participants would experience enhanced social support networks and would feel the project provided an effective vehicle for their continued activism around BDSM issues.

The film has been warmly received within the BDSM community as a welcome change from the exploitive and sensationalized representations frequently seen in mainstream media.