Orgasm Inc. documentary by Liz Canner attacks female sexual dysfunction make-belief

Orgasm Inc, a shocking insider’s story on how pharma companies make big bucks selling even human desires as diseases, will be premiered in May 2009.

Orgasm Inc. – a documentary film by Liz Canner that seeks to dissect the corporate commoditization of perfectly normal sexual phenomena like female orgasm is premiering at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in May. 

Orgasm, Inc takes “a humorous and sobering look inside the medical industry and the marketing campaigns that are literally and figuratively reshaping our everyday lives around health, illness, desire and that ultimate moment: orgasm.” 

Orgasm Inc marks the culmination of director-producer Liz Canner’s “eight year odyssey following cadre of drug companies as they race to be the first to win FDA approval of their pill, cream, patch or nose spray.”

What’s Orgasm Inc about?

In the documentary Orgasm Inc. filmmaker Liz Canner takes a job editing erotic videos for a drug trial for a pharmaceutical company Vivus. Vivus was struggling to develop a drug to treat female sexual dysfunction (FSD) an equivalent of men’s  Viagra for women.

Somehow, Liz obtains permission from her employer to film the company for her own documentary. Her plan was to create a movie about science and pleasure. However, soon she stumbles upon certain revelations. Liz begins suspecting that Vivus, along with a cadre of other medical companies, might be trying to potentially endanger women’s health in their pursuit of billion dollar profits.

Interestingly, Liz , in the course of the film interviews,  come upon several doctors, scientists and psychiatrists all intended to stop corporate medicine before it is too late.

For, they  strongly believe that sexual dissatisfaction is a “disease” that needs to be treated with a drug. So they resist the pharmaceutical industry’s make-belief  tooth and nail. According to these doctors, most of women’s sexual problems are due to cultural conditions — relationship issues, sexual abuse, poor sex education and stress from overwork.

Along the way, Liz encounters some compelling characters who make some important revelations key to women’s orgasm. There is a doctor in Winston Salem, NC, who is testing an Orgasmatron. Orgasmetron inserts electrodes into the spine to arouse orgasm in women. A medical device marketer who is in the process of launching Designer Laser Vaginoplasty surgery to “help” women look and feel young again “down there.”

And some inspirational pioneers committed to leading others to true erotic fulfillment. A sex-store owner who teaches doctors a non-medical pleasure based approach for patients and a professor at Harvard Medical School who believe that the key to sexual satisfaction is to change not just our sex lives but also our society.

Orgasm Inc. attempts to reveals that many of the so-called “treatments” for FSD have potentially dangerous and life-threatening side effects, including genital mutilation, breast cancer, and dementia.

Orgasm Inc. takes a dig at drug Intrinsa, a testosterone patch, touted to be the first drug to treat women with low sexual desire, from Procter & Gamble.  Procter & Gamble, at the heated exchange during the USFDA approval course, is seen battling not only over the drug’s FDA approval but ultimately our future cultural and scientific understanding of sex.

Orgasm Inc. concludes that drug companies and medical device manufacturers have already begun spending millions of dollars on marketing not only their treatments but also and scientific distortion that sexual desire or its variations are a ‘disease.’ And the world soon starts forgetting all the inconvenient truths as the existence of both ‘disease’ and ‘cure’ begin to dominate all discussion of sexual dissatisfaction.

Liz Canner: The award winning filmmaker

Orgasm Inc. is award-winning director Liz Canner’s first feature documentary. Canner was recently named one of the top ten independent filmmakers to watch in 2009 by The Independent Magazine and honored with a Visionary Award from Dartmouth College for the movie. Since earning her BA with Honors from Brown University in 1991, she has received more than 45 awards, honors and grants for her many innovative documentary projects on human rights issues. Canner’s documentaries have been broadcast on PBS, cable stations and internationally in many countries. They have screened at festivals like The New York Film Festival and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. For her contribution to the field, Canner has been honored with a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (Bunting) Fellowship from Harvard University and a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellowship.

Orgasm Inc — Docu-film

Running time:  77 min.

Director/Producer/Camera: Liz Canner

Executive Producers: Julie Parker Benello, Wendy Ettinger and Judith Helfand of Chicken & Egg Pictures and Marc Weiss

Consulting Producer: Doug Block

Associate Producers: Jane Applegate and Sarah Canner

Editors: Liz Canner, Sandra Christie, Tricia Reidy, Becky Goldberg, Jeremiah Zagar

Animation: Jay Beaudoin and Nicholas Fischer

Original Music: Stephanie Olmanni, Alex Barnett and Don Glasgo

Chicken and Egg Pictures, Astrea Media, Inc. and Ro*co Films International

Orgasm Inc. will make its world premiere at the Hot Docs Film Festival, Toronto, Ontario, on May 2nd and 5th. Hot Docs is the largest North American film festival devoted to documentaries, and among the preeminent international documentary festivals. The film is co-presented at Hot Docs with The Female Eye Film Festival.