Jean-Daniel Cadinot (born February 10, 1944) is a French director and producer of gay pornographic films.
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Biography
As a teenager Cadinot hoped to become a painter and, due to parental opposition, ran away from home at the age of 17.[1] In the early 1960s, he studied at École des Arts et Métiers and at the National School of Photography. He then began his professional career at Valois Studios, where he directed mainstream films for French-speaking audiences.[2] He first pursued a career in photography, which took on a homosexual angle with his nude portrait of writer Yves Navarre and singer Patrick Juvet. His erotic photographs appeared in the first edition of Gai Pied.[3] He began to sell nude photographs and finally moved to directing movies in 1978. Setting up his own production company,French Art, Cadinot made dozens of 16 mm films since then, usually with specific settings or themes, such as an excursion of French Boy Scouts, life in a boarding school or a journey to Venice, greatly contributing to the erotic appeal of the works through the specific situations depicted. Often these themes were somewhat derived from Cadinot's life experiences, especially from his youth. By 1998 he had directed 54 films, some under the pseudonym Tony Dark.[1] Cadinot's early films are often basically regular movies with occasional hardcore gay sex scenes interspersed. Rather than just portraying a string of sexual encounters with minimal dialogue, they showcase Cadinot's fascination with characterization, lighting, and his often slightly jocular approach to gay sexuality. In recent years, Cadinot's films have become more conventional and are more difficult to distinguish from other United States or European productions. It is hard to believe Cadinot himself had any personal involvement with some of the recent material traded under his name, so uninspired and tedious have some of them become e.g. Auberge de Jeunesse. Sex scenes now tend to take center stage while the setting, plot or acting are of considerably lesser importance. It might be disadvantageous that his production now uses video, which, while offering higher image clarity and lower production costs than 16 mm, tends to have a low-contrast, somewhat overlit "studio" look which lacks the artistic appeal of his conventionally filmed material.
Trademark elements of his films
- Often plot- and character-driven (though considerably less so in recent years)
- Mostly feature youthful, slender, not particularly muscular men
- Humoristic characters and situations, for example the cameo appearance of Cadinot's Mother as a cleaner in Escalier de Service.
- Outdoor locations in the French countryside
- Sexual positions or techniques:
- Unprotected sex
- Cadinot directs his characters to often stay partially clothed during sex, and there is a fetishistic focus on swollen genitals admired in white underwear.
Filmography
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Footnotes
References
- Aldrich, Robert & Wotherspoon, Garry (2001), Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II, Routledge, pp. 69-70, ISBN 041522974X
- Martel, Frederic (2000), The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France Since 1968, Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804732744
See also
External links
- Official site
- GLBTQ: Article about J.-D. Cadinot
- IMDB Index of Cadinot's works
| GayVN Awards Hall of Fame 2001 |
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Chi Chi LaRue as Taylor Hudson for The Rise |
AVN Awards for Best Director-Gay Video for The Traveling Journeymen (Le Désir en Ballade) 1992 |
Succeeded by Chi Chi LaRue for Songs in the Key of Sex |
