A slick promoter in the bodybuilding subculture of Venice Beach, California, finds what he considers a diamond in the rough: a dedicated but somewhat mentally challenged young man who wants to win bodybuilding championships, but needs some help and direction--and the promoter thinks he's just the one to do it.
Lisa Lyon won the first World Women's Bodybuilding Championship in 1980. She was a pioneer in this area, and went on to appear world-wide as a proponent for women's health, and paved the way for a new generation of female bodybuilders. This video portrait was produced in 1982 and it went on to win competitions in Europe, and was shown on Italian TV. Director John Hunt won Best Director at the Los Angeles Erotic Film Festival awards. The original music score is from Steve Roach.
On January 25, 1984, at Long Beach State Art Gallery, Lisa called this performance Graphite Woman, as she was coated in this substance, and she recreated her world championship routine for a small audience of art lovers. Accompanied by the Shakuhachi flute, behind a low wall of gold bricks, Lisa again demonstrates her ideas of the body as art. This is something she promoted in her work as she saw herself as an artist whose canvas was her whole body.
Two fraternity pledges go to a sleazy bar in search of a stripper for their college friends, unaware it is occupied by vampires.
Shortly after murdering his professor, a young man encounters a sailor who offers him a position on his ship in exchange for 3 Danish crowns and his attention as he recounts his life story.
The world of female bodybuilding provides the backdrop for this tale of an aspiring young actress who initially becomes interested in the sport as a means of self-defense following a physical attack by two men, but then finds that while concentrating on building up her body her relationship with her parents, with whom she is living, and her new-found boyfriend, a young cop, is breaking down. Several noted bodybuilders and iron-pumpers, male and female, put in appearances to give this production an added authenticity.
Ten erotic vignettes from eight different directors.
During Lisa Lyon's short career, she became known around the world, and actually had a talk show in Japan at one time. Artist Tadanori Yokoo made a series of woodcuts using Lisa as his model. Filmmaker John Hunt gathered a few of them in this video.
In this show, Lisa speaks poetically about her "Female Spirit" and about her destiny; she exposes the audience to her “ritual and her agony”. As she explains, it is a reaction to the abstract art movement, which had removed the human form, and it was her attempt to return to a more classical vision of art today. In her work, she elevated the gymnasium up to the art gallery. Six other bodybuilder/artists perform routines for the audience.
Lisa Lyon takes her clothes off under 80s pop and coloured lights in a beautiful building.