Six gay porn actors stare back at you while you wait for their scene to start.

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EXHIBITIONS:

Frameline, June 2025

MIX NYC, November 2024

New/Next, October 2024

aGLIFF Film Festival, August 2024

IFC Center, New York, October 2023

Flickers at Starr Bar Cinematheque, New York City, October 2023

F!LTH by SEEN @ Cactus Club, Milwaukee, January 2023

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"A censored, hidden, and even forbidden gaze forms the core of one of the festival standouts, Christian Meola’s Gangbang (2023). For seven minutes, a group of gay porn actors stare directly at the camera, their shirts off, striking various poses with one another, in an ostensibly Ikea-furnished bedroom assembled for the purpose of the shoot. A still from the film might be mistaken for an image from a men’s catalog. But the aliveness of the moving image brims with anticipation, as we wait for the scene to escalate. It never does. Instead, Meola continues to shoot the men as they return the camera’s unrelenting stare and, in doing so, deconstructs our own."

                                  -Will Digravio, Millennium Film Journal

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"By independent film standards, these are established faces; who’s next? The first place to look is always the shorts programs, where two stuck me above all the others. In GANGBANG (2023) by Christian Meola, a group of shirtless, conventionally attractive young men of all different classifications stand around a bed, smiling into the camera, in a shot that holds and holds far beyond comfort until everyone starts laughing. The images begin to fade over each other into smiling close-ups or the men arranged in different collections of poses around the bed. It is a gay porno without porn, only the anticipation of the display of bodily pleasure that will never come." 

                                   -Alex Le, Filmmaker Magazine

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"These people are shown to use, one by one, with enough time to look at every part of their face - eyes, smile, dimples, etc. It starts to feel less like we are watching people and more like we are being shown the options in a menu."

                                   -Out.bg

 

GANGBANG deconstructs the presentation of male bodies in gay contemporary pornography. The film takes place in a bedroom that resembles a gay porn set. Six male models occupy the space, surrounding an empty bed, staring at you. They barely move, always keeping their smile, which is all the intimacy they offer. We anticipate that someone will eventually make the first move, but unlike what the title suggests, GANGBANG denies the viewer of sexual gratification.

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2024