MUBI on Curating a Season of Sexy Animations

Words: Gina Tonic

Animated Desires is a stand out on MUBI, not only because it’s their second ever animated season, but for being unabashedly horny. Many of the fan reviews I found of Animated Desires were taken by surprise by the explicitness of some of the shorts featured – a happy surprise, it should be noted – but a shock nonetheless.

This is, of course, a huge part of the fun. This precisely picked set of films explore the weird and wonderful nuances of our sexualities through bold, brash and bolshy creative choices that could only happen in animation. From the beautiful surrealism of the infamous Asparagus (1979) to the carnal carnage of Bug Diner (2024), the highs and lows of expressing desire are explored in ways that truly exemplify not just the joys of exploring our bodies and the bodies of others, but the terrific trepidation that occurs in these tender moments. Masturbation is walked in on and a source of resentment in 27 (2023) while in Pussy (2019), wanking is personified as personable and protective as well as pleasurable.

The through thread of this collection – which ranges from historical fiction in Maurice’s Bar to erotic symphony in Tram – is clearly a sense of humour and soul, one that is undeniably necessary for one to have a full sexual life.

I had a chance to speak to MUBI’s Senior Programming Manager Emily Wright, one of the several curators involved in the collection, about the process behind Animated Desires.

How do you begin putting together a programme like Animated Desires?

“I often think a season starts with a single film - a piece that resonates deeply and sets the aesthetic and emotional tone” says Emily, explaining that the MUBI team were particularly inspired by Flóra Anna Buda’s 27, a short film that explores the complications of the housing crisis for young people, the literal impact it has on one’s sex life, as well as the implication and imposition it has on young people’s freedoms. “It felt super relatable, and the response to the film was such that that became the seed and the spark for conceiving the wider season.” From the complexity of this Short Film Palme d'Or winner, the team were inspired to dig into the special ability animation has to reflect desire. 

“It’s a really pliable space. Because of that, animation allows for an elastic, imaginative approach to representing desire, whether it’s through abstraction, surrealism, or metaphor.” She continues. “We encountered so many wild and different visions of desire during our research, and we wanted the end result to celebrate the boldness of vision that comes through in these films—how animators have found ways to externalize what often remains internal, using the freedom of the form to explore fantasies, anxieties, and identities that live beyond the limits of live action.”

Emily also notes that the decision was also made to only use short films over feature length in the programming. It was with this much more specific sense of what to look out for that the research could begin.

How do you ensure the season isn’t repetitive at any stage?

“One of the hardest parts of any curation is balancing diversity with coherence or consistency. Even though each film in a curated collection has its own individual voice, you want the season to feel like a cohesive whole, where the films speak to each other and build a strong thematic or emotional arc for the audience.” Emily says. “But at the same time, you’re working with a broad theme—like desire—so you need to ensure there’s enough diversity within the selection to cover the many different ways desire manifests across time, culture, and identity. Here, we wanted to combine different eras, and pair more abstract, surreal work like Suzan Pitt’s ASPARAGUS with more light-hearted narrative films, like Michaela Pavlátová’s TRAM or Phoebe Jane Heart’s BUG DINER. It’s important to have different points of entry for the audience.”

How do you ensure the selection is varied enough when exploring a topic as wide spread as desire?

“It was crucial for the collection to showcase a range of voices and perspectives, so that the season would feel like a conversation rather than a single argument.” Emily explains. No single narrative can fully encapsulate the breadth of human sexual experience, so from the get-go it was absolutely essential for us to select films that showcase different sexual identities, orientations, and relationships. We wanted there to be something in there for everyone – to find your kink within the range of the collection.”  

Digging deeper into the Animated Desires season, Emily continues: “The form of animation afforded us the possibility of achieving range in a really unique way, precisely because of the malleability of the form. It’s so grounded in imagination, and imagination can always escape the rules. Animation can invent new stories and configurations, away from the prejudices and labels that society imposes.”

Was there anything else you needed to keep in mind while curating?

Emily notes, “From the season’s conception,  it was really important for us to include some pioneering works of animation, to show that the newer films are part of a really radical and groundbreaking lineage of animation. Filmmakers have been working on these themes, you know, since the 1970s and even before. It felt so important to include those voices, because it helps trace both how the medium of animation has changed, but also the cultural conversation around sex and desire.”

She continues, “So, for example, in the 1970s there was a huge amount of experimentation in art and social norms. There was a sense of freedom. A sexual revolution had just happened and there were changing attitudes towards film censorship as well, which allowed for the animators to take bigger risks whilst exploring these taboo subjects. That was the case with Susan Pitts’ Asparagus, which became a cornerstone film in the collection. Another film that we were super excited to bring to the platform – because it's the first time that's being shown online – was Lisa Crafts’ Desire Pie (1976). It's an amazing film, it was made in Harvard but then banned in Boston because of its very explicit depiction of sex from a female point of view. But similarly to Asparagus, it also went on to travel really widely on the midnight film circuit and was used as a resource for sex educators and sex therapists.”

“It was important for us to include films from different eras in the conversation to support the full history of filmmaking,” she adds, “to drive home the fact that this is a language that has been developing for many, many, many years, and that it's had sort of slightly different iterations on the way.”

Not to wax too lyrical about honouring the past of filmmaking, Emily makes sure to emphasise the importance of platforming the present and future of films when putting together a programme. “Those two films really express the quite experimental, subversive nature of the period, in a way that's very different to the more polished and digitally enhanced techniques of today,  apparent in many of the more contemporary shorts  in the collection.” Emily concludes, “More recent films like #21XOXO (2019) and 27 engage with complex or intersectional ideas of desire – like the fluidity of gender, the representation of queer bodies, or the implications of technology and virtual spaces on intimacy.”

Any last bits of advice on programming something like this?

We finish our conversation with wider strokes about the art of film programming and Emily's passion for the curatorial process shines as she picks up her final point – that, without catering to your audience, there's little point to the practice at all. “Once you have your idea and your “why”, really focus on the audience. Ultimately, curation is about caring deeply for an artform, and wanting to share that. But in order to properly reach the people you want to share it with, you need to constantly come back to them, and what their needs, or desires, might be.This includes curating for their expectations, for sure, but also challenging their expectations by introducing them to new work, new films and new filmmakers.” 

“So another important thing is research. This is so so so crucial – a solid curation can’t really happen within the vacuum of our own taste. So it’s important to be curious and to constantly expand our frame of reference. In a sense, we have a responsibility to be expansive in our research, we owe it to the work but also to the audience.”  

While, due to the expansiveness of the topic, Animated Desires couldn’t commit to representing every kind of sex, sexuality or desire, Emily’s note on representation points to the importance of speaking directly to your audience on why that is. “We have to caveat the season with the fact that this is a snapshot.” She says. “It's not necessarily the full picture, and it isn't necessarily a comprehensive or definitive list of animators that have been making films engaging with these themes. Instead, it is a collection of voices that we've brought together that explore different aspects of the theme of desire. Because, you know, it would be an infinite sort of collection, almost to sort of try and include every single iteration of animated desire short film. As a curator, if you've done your research, you should feel confident that at least there's enough of these voices coming across.”

Bearing this in mind when engaging with Animated Desires makes it no less of an enjoyable watch, especially with the more surreal stories told. Not every piece of media we consume has to be directly applicable to our own experiences and in fact, there’s definitely a purposeful joy in watching works that make us question our beliefs on the topic of sex and sexuality. Knowing the incredible hard work that has gone into programming this MUBI season definitely makes it all the more pleasurable a viewing experience.

Check out the full season of Animated Desires on MUBI here.