Sex: The Annabel Chong Story (1999) is a documentary, directed and produced by Gough Lewis, which profiles student and porn star Annabel Chong (real name: Grace Quek). Quek, a student at the University of Southern California, was also an adult actress famous for setting a world record by having sex 251 times with 70 men in ten hours in January 1995. A video of this event was released under the title The World's Biggest Gang Bang[1]. The documentary explores all the worlds that have touched Quek including her life as a student in Southern California, in 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. 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[2], 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 career. The director Gough Lewis, a university film student, had an affair with Annabel Chong at the time of the filming. This was not mentioned in the movie but stated by Annabel Chong in an interview in 2000.[3] In the same interview, she explained that the self-cutting episode depicted in the documentary occurred right after she and Gough Lewis had broken up, and that he had engaged in the same behavior; she deplored that this context was left out of the movie. The documentary became a hit when it was released at the Sundance Film Festival, nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, and championed by Robert Redford and Jeff Gilmore. The film was released in theatres in 50 countries. The film's North American release was halted or minimized as a result of a court case in the Superior Court of Canada with David Whitten, a B-movie distributor[4]. David Whitten was legally extracted from the project and his junior producer credit removed, but not after extensive commercial damage to the film, sub-standard DVD creation & distribution, and collapsing North American Distribution of the film.
Trivia
- The calligraphy Chong's father was performing was "Endure" (Chinese: 忍).
References
- ^ CNN.com Sex sobers in controversial Sundance documentary by Paul Clinton
- ^ The Flick Filosopher article by Maryann Johanson
- ^ Life thru a lens. Robin Askew meets the star of Sex: The Annabel Chong Story Spike Magazine
- ^ Moviemaker.com Straight From the Horse's Mouth: How To Avoid Distribution Hell by Bill Gates
