Hot Girls Wanted, Tuesday, April 14, 2015 7:00 pm

Year Released:: 2015
Genres:: Documentary
Metadata:: Directed by Jill Bauer, Ronna Gradus

Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus are scheduled to be present. Hot Girls Wanted is a first-ever look at the realities of the professional “amateur” porn world and the steady stream of 18-to-19-year old girls entering into it.

In the past decade, the proliferation of the Internet has brought significant shifts in the way porn is produced and consumed. Today, for many teenage girls, porn carries fewer taboos than it did for their parents’ generation. Directors Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus explore this uncharted territory and reveal a business reliant on Millennials who believe empowerment is synonymous with online notoriety. The filmmakers follow one such girl, eager to leave small-town life in search of freedom and fame. With the click of a mouse she transforms from A-student to fledgling amateur actress. She initially feels independent and popular starring in professionally produced videos—uploaded on sites garnering an average of 41 million hits a month. But as she and some of her new friends fall deeper into the darker corners of the Internet, and as new faces arrive daily, they’re forced to reconsider an increasingly dubious line of work.

Backed by two Indiana University and Kinsey Institute affiliated researchers and an acclaimed team of producers, including Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation), the directors expose the complicated reality behind this fantasy world. As porn viewership dwarfs other entertainment and seeps deeper into our public and private lives, Hot Girls Wanted is essential viewing. (2K DCP presentation)

The screening is sponsored by the Center for Sexual Health Promotion in IU's School of Public Health and The Kinsey Institute.

DISCUSSION WITH FILMMAKERS The film will be followed by a Q&A with directors Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus and co-producers Dr. Debby Herbenick and Dr. Bryant Paul.

Jill Bauer, Director, Producer, Sound Operator, is also the director and producer of the documentary Sexy Baby (world premiere Tribeca, 2012, broadcast premiere Showtime, Best Film by New Directors at Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival). Bauer, formerly a writer for the Miami Herald, is a Hearst and SPJ award-winning journalist. She has also written and edited for Esquire, The Dallas Morning News, The New York Times and launched Smart Kid, a national parenting magazine.

Ronna Gradus, Director, Producer, Director of Photography, is also the director and producer of the documentary Sexy Baby (world premiere Tribeca 2012, broadcast premiere Showtime, Best Film by New Directors at Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival). Gradus is a former staff photographer for The Miami Herald. Among her many assignments at the newspaper, she was sent to Cuba and covered Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. She is a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and is from Brooklyn.

Dr. Debby Herbenick, Co-Producer, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion, as well as a sexual health educator for The Kinsey Institute, both at Indiana University. Dr. Herbenick has taught human sexuality classes at IU for more than a decade and has authored more than 90 scientific publications—as well as five books about sex and love—and has written for Men’s Health magazine and Salon. She is an AASECT-certified sexuality educator, a widely read sex columnist, and serves on the boards of several non-profits dedicated to improving sexual health in the United States and internationally.

Dr. Bryant Paul, Co-Producer, Ph.D. in Communications, is an Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University. He is a Faculty Affiliate of the Kinsey Institute and IU’s Center for Sexual Health Promotion. His research and teaching focuses on the nature and effects of sexually explicit media content, social science research methods, and issues generally related to media and society. Dr. Paul has served as a research consultant to the First Amendment Lawyers Association and the Free Speech Coalition. Among his most recent work is a study considering intra- and inter-gender physiological reactions to sexually explicit depictions and what will be the largest-ever systematic content analysis of online sexually-explicit video material.