Sex Radical

At the turn of the 20th-century, the powerful federal censor, Anthony Comstock, believed he was on a holy mission to save America’s youth from “sexual sin.” But when he tried to silence a visionary “sex radical” named Ida Craddock, she would have the last word.

SEX RADICAL is a documentary-drama about a forgotten pioneer in the long struggle for free expression and gender equality, Ida Craddock. In a time before the ACLU, before Planned Parenthood — before the term “birth control” had even been coined — Craddock and her fellow “sex radicals” challenged the federal Comstock Act, which prohibited the distribution of any information about sex, contraception, or abortion through the U.S. Mail.

A sex educator, scholar, and religious mystic, Craddock published frank instructional guides for newly married couples. Her books celebrated women’s sexuality, and offered specific advice for more mutually satisfying sex. Consequently, she quickly ran afoul of Anthony Comstock, a puritanical “vice hunter” and federal “special agent” who was backed by America’s richest men. Though arrested multiple times, sentenced to prison, committed to an asylum, and forced to turn over her books for burning, Craddock was undeterred in her fight for women’s bodily autonomy and her own First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion. She defied Comstock, and took her case to the public. The feminist icon Emma Goldman, who narrates the film, called Ida Craddock “one of the bravest champions of Women’s Emancipation.” SEX RADICAL retrieves a forgotten past, in order that we may more fully understand the present.

Writer/Director/Cinematographer: Andy Kirshner

Producers: Brenna K. Murphy, Andy Kirshner

Lead Actors: Emily Sutton-Smith, Priscilla Lindsay

Production Designer: Laura Pazuchowski

Sound Designer: David Fienup

Learn more: www.sexradicalmovie.com

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