Sex: The Annabel Chong Story
Sex: The Annabel Chong Story is a 1999 documentary film directed, filmed, and produced by Canada-based producer Gough Lewis, edited by co-creator Kelly Morris,[1] and produced by Peter Carr.
| Sex: The Annabel Chong Story | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Gough Lewis |
| Produced by | Gough Lewis, Kelly Morris & Peter Carr |
| Written by | Gough Lewis |
| Cinematography | Gough Lewis |
| Edited by | Kelly Morris |
Release date |
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Running time | 1 hour and 27 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
The film profiles porn star Annabel Chong (born Grace Quek), a gender studies student at the University of Southern California, who was also an adult actress who was famous for setting a world gang bang record in January 1995. A video of event was released under the title The World's Biggest Gang Bang.[2]
Synopsis
The documentary explores all the worlds that have touched Quek, presenting the pieces of her life as a student in Los Angeles, California and London, her native Singapore, and in the porn industry. It focuses on her reasons for working in porn, and her relationship with friends and family.[3]
The documentary reveals to the viewers that she was gang raped as a student living in London and describes her many complex emotional issues, including signs of depression, self-harm,[3] and substance abuse. The film also includes footage of a painful conversation in Singapore between Annabel and her mother, who, until then, didn't know about her daughter's porn career.[3]
Response
The documentary became a hit when it was released at the Sundance Film Festival, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize.[4]
The film's North American release was halted or minimized as a result of a court case in the Superior Court of Canada instigated by David Whitten, a B-movie distributor.[5] Whitten was legally extracted from the project and his junior producer credit removed.
In the Guardian, Jonathan Romney (2000) wrote, "Quek's refusal to cohere as a subject is contingent on the fact that there's apparently no one looking at her: director Lewis is curiously absent, as either a character or as an invisible shaping intelligence. But he apparently was a character in her story: in interviews, Quek has denounced him for failing to reveal that he was her lover for a year during the making of Sex, something the film never even implies. That omission contributes to making the film incomplete, if not actually dishonest." Gough Lewis admitted he had a sexual relationship with the Worlds Biggest Gang Bang porn star that "just happened" during the creating of the documentary. She asked him to marry her, he agreed, and she quit the porn business. He filmed her mother finding out that her daughter was the porn star of "Worlds Biggest Gang Bang", let alone an adult entertainer... The parents did not know. Later that day, she asked the Director-Producer of the documentary to marry her in her parent's home in Singapore. He agreed. He broke off the engagement when she cheated on him with a Mexican busker she picked up outside a liquor store in LA. He filmed her return to the porn industry as the final part of the documentary. "Documentary Filmmakers are vampires when they get that deep, I got PTSD from that film and living inside that porn world". Gough Lewis retired from filmmaking after the successful launch globally of the controversial film.
References
- "Kelly A. Morris". IMDb. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
- "Sex sobers in controversial Sundance documentary". CNN. February 10, 1999. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
- "Sex: The Annabel Chong Story (review)". flickfilosopher.com. 13 February 2000. Retrieved 21 November 2016.
- "Sex: The Annabel Chong Story". Top Documentary Films. Retrieved 2014-06-06.
- Moviemaker.com Straight From the Horse's Mouth: How To Avoid Distribution Hell by Keith Bearden Archived 2006-03-24 at the Wayback Machine