Product DescriptionThis film follows fetish photographer Noel Graydon in his quest for authenticity. In the process of revealing Noel's motives we encounter the clandestine world of bondage and discipline, fetish fashion, and alternative sex. During his journey Noel became addicted to heroin while being a respected BDSM master (or sex-worker), now with a wife and child he is rapidly gaining mainstream recognition for his unusual fine art photography. This documentary shows his work in progress, the passion for his art and its themes, the community he moves within and their controversial transgressive activities. - Actors: Nikki, Noel Graydon, Puck, John Elliott, Mistress Felina
- Director: Michael Ney
- Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC
- Language (Original Language): English
- Region Code: 0
- Release Date: 2008-01-22
- Running Time: 90 minutes
- Theatrical Release Date: 2005
Customer ReviewsReviewed on 2007-12-30 
Documenting Unusual Lives: Liberty In Restraint
We see images of kink everywhere nowadays. Be it our lifestyle publications to the assimilation of the imagery in popular culture (think of the print advertisements for movies like Hostel or the Saw series). At the same time, as often as we see the photographs and the artwork, we forget that there is a person behind the camera. Someone had to set up the studio, find models and assistants, in some cases, come up with a concept, and then start snapping the shutter. Then even if you have the preconception that there is a hand on the camera, what about the person holding it? What makes him shoot that shot?
"Liberty in Restraint," directed by Michael Ney, quests to get into the mind of Australian fetish photographer Noel Graydon. Following his creative arc from aspiring commercial photographer to fetish practitioner, Graydon is a man who couldn't just try an activity as much as he had to immerse himself. Begining from his candid admission to once being a heroin addict (because he wanted to see what the whole drug culture was all about), Graydon brings the same aesthetic to his kinky photography. He recognized the fetish world as having overlaps in "the psychology of sex and the psychology of addiction."
Soon he has a crew of similarly-minded associates who draw him into the Australian Fetish Community. Many of these folk add commentary to the film, including his bondage rope enthusiast/mentor Mistress Felina (who Graydon praises for her "beauty in rope") and Puck, who is credited in the film as "our guide to SM." The various men and women who allow themselves to be filmed and interviewed all comment about the natural nature of their D/s relationships. As is typical in these kind of documentaries, the surprise to most vanilla viewers will be not that the participants are freakish or outrageous, but just how typical they seem to be. Depictions and descriptions of bloodsport, mummification, hot wax, rope bondage, fire play, club officers and organizers pepper the film with their observations and philosophies. There is the usual common ground about respect and trust, but also interspersed with Noel's fascination with the "why."
This documentary, then, is following Graydon's journey. He becomes so engrossed in his new world that he even becomes Master Venom and enters the arena of the Pro-Dom. He gets a full-back tattoo and allows himself to endure a ritual cutting. The deeper Graydon goes, the more intense the participants he attracts become. (I must admit, the session with 'needle boy' even had me cringing.) "Liberty In Restraint" doubles as your travelogue to kinky Sydney, as historical points of Australian kink are expounded on. While Graydon himself considers photography voyeuristic, he doesn't consider himself a voyeur...and the film often leaves you in the voyeur's seat. Graydon's photography is the focus of the documentary, and his various pieces and their executions/explanations are what move "Liberty" forward. Even his relapse into drug addiction shows his journey, as the ones who help him kick are members of his new community, along with his family.
That individualism among the community comes through in the interviews. A trip to the DV8 play party provides a great chunk of the psychology of fetish participants, and is the segment that features the more explicit play. The most shocking session is the final photo shoot, titled "Suffer the Little Children," where Graydon works his anger at the Australian Catholic arch-Bishop's 2002 child sex scandals, where the Arch Bishop accused the gay community as being "more hazardous than smoking" while covering for pedophiles in the church. Graydon's offense at the hypocrisy is laid out when he states "I feel perfectly comfortable to leave my child with any of my queer friends, but there's no way I'd leave her with a catholic priest."
Surrounding a trio of rubber and gas-mask clad individuals in a crucifixion tableau with a variety of kinky iconic characters. There are Nuns with gasmasks, a leather cop, a `crown of thorns' designed with forehead piercings, a priest, a bishop and Graydon's infant daughter in very nervy portrait. As the climactic moment of Liberty in Restraint, it's a stunner.
At the same time, Graydon also shows himself as a family man who cares for his wife and baby, even as he recognizes his 'alternative family.' The film closes with Graydon conceding that his immense talent as a fetish photographer has to take second seat to his family, but he (along with his subjects and the interviewees) give insight into just what fetish brings to their lives. Sadly, "Liberty In Restraint" also serves as a memoriam to Graydon, who tragically died in 2007 of a heart-attack. One of the extra scenes is of Graydon in New York City in 2004, when a short-cut of the film as a work-in-progress was to be shown to an audience at the Cinekink Festival. Highly Recommnded.
"Liberty In Restraint," directed by Michael Ney, Produced by Sensory Image and Frontier Films.
90 minutes, includes a photo gallery of Noel Graydon's work, 6 deleted scenes and 5 extra interviews. This film contains high levels of adult themes, adult activity and references. But isn't that what you're looking for anyway?
Also recommended: Tom of Finland: Daddy and the Muscle Academy, Arakimentari and Rope Bondage: Precision and Persuasion With Rope (Smtech Educational). |  | Reviewed on 2007-12-05
Eye popping, jaw dropping, mind bending!
Liberty In Restraint, directed by Michael Ney, takes a tour around the controversial and forbidden world of sexual fetish in Sydney, through eyes of fine art fetish photographer Noel Graydon.
It's hard to imagine a more explosive scenario in today's Australia than the juxtaposing of a sexual fetish tableau based on the crucifixion, with real life characters from recent scandals involving priests and children. Just such a scenario is included in his 90 min documentary, which follows art photographer Noel Graydon through the underworld of BDSM - bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism. Made with the best of motives - to illuminate the subject and help our understanding of this aspect of the human condition - the film is neither exploitative nor offensive - although some people will take offence, for all the wrong reasons - and some will find the film's graphic content extreme and shocking.
Graydon's tableau, titled Suffer the Little Children, is a satire on Ruben's religious painting, Coup de Lance, depicting the crucifixion with a soldier's long lance piercing Jesus' ribcage. Graydon subverts this image by employing a fetish motif.
Wearing body tight black latex and rope bound, Graydon takes the Jesus position on the cross, his forehead pierced by fetish needles to replicate the crown of thorns; either side of him, similar figures in latex, and an assistant dressed as a nun in a gasmask. His wife Annette is dressed as a nurse, cradling their baby girl, "representing all innocent children, and to a great extent, hope." She, too has a (child's) gasmask, symbol of the dangerous, "fearful world" we live in, says Graydon.
Graydon, a lapsed Catholic, was nevertheless angered by what he calls the "Pell / Hollingworth paedophiles in the church" scandal in 2002; "Pell accused the gay community of being what he called ungodly; not welcome in his church and certainly not receiving communion. Why do I feel perfectly comfortable to leave my child with any of my queer friends, but there's no way I'd leave her with a catholic priest." Graydon's title, Suffer the Little Children, leaves the viewer in no doubt as to what he believes that object to be.
This piece of satire adds yet another layer to a film already layered with a rich mix of personal and social exploration. It's an eye popping, jaw dropping and mind bending essay on a 'scene' that is never seen and totally misunderstood.
Illumination comes in many guises; one guy thinks he likes being trussed up because it reminds him of the feelings of comfort and being loved as a toddler "wrapped in swaddling". For a woman brought up as a strict Catholic, being restrained in a sexual context releases her from feelings of sex related guilt. For others there is catharsis, pleasure through pain, creative fulfilment - especially in the striking Japanese rope bondage work - and for some it's simply fun to play submissive / dominant sex games. We discover DV8 House and mingle with costumed participants at fetish play parties like the Hellfire Club.
All through the film we track Graydon's progress through his career and his personal life. He took his first erotic photo at age 15, but soon needed some reason for people (his subjects) to be photographed naked. When he began photographing the BDSM scene, he quickly realised that he wanted to "look from the inside out, not from the outside in".
He put down the cameras and immersed himself in BDSM even becoming a male sex worker / BDSM Master for four years. Through his life, Graydon went through some painful lows, including chronic addiction to drugs like smack and speed, and got through it with a sense of achievement, and became a devoted father and loving husband.
Tragically, Noel died of a heart attack in July 2007.
We see him at work - the moving images capturing his struggle to capture his vision in stills. Given the subject matter, there are inevitable images of naked bodies being whipped, pierced, smacked, bound tightly and elaborately in ropes and tackle. The camera never shies away from images that out of this context would be regarded as shocking. It's a kind of controlled sensual and sexual extremism, set in a context of people united by a common bond, as it were.
"Bondage and Discipline"
And these people we meet do not seem especially bizarre, unless you call Puck's bright red hair bizarre. Perhaps surprisingly, the practitioners seen here are characterised by gentleness and caring; if this seems contradictory, it's Puck (a BDSM - or Bondage and Discipline - Master who prefers the title 'assistant') who articulated the central mantra: it has to be safe, medically as well as physically. Indeed, there is surgical precision in some of the practices, such as nails hammered gently into flesh, piercing through the skin, garrotting of genitals, binding breasts into grotesque shapes and so on.
The film is a safe way for you and me to visit the pursuit of inner liberation through the restraint of bondage in the unhysterical environment created by a sincere filmmaker with a natural cinematic eye (who has sampled the forbidden delights of BDSM himself). Whether we think of Graydon's photographs are art or exploitation is irrelevant: they don't sell in porn shops, but are hung in galleries. In a way, seeing this world through Graydon's work is a filter that director Michael Ney has added to his own filtering process, which makes the film all the more interesting. And probably more accessible.
The music was composed by Barton Staggs, who also helped edit the footage. His minimalist score uses metal percussion and gongs to convey a sense of ritual. And ritual it is: every detail is ritualised, down to the details of dress - or undress. And not a pubic hair in sight.
At the New York CineKink Festival in October 2004, a 35 minute work in progress won the Best Short Documentary award.
Review written by Andrew L. Urban. | |
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