Inside Lara Roxx
MARCH 31 » 9:15p
NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE
2011, Canada, 80 min.
Director: Mia Donovan
Cast: Lara Roxx, Sharon Mitchell, Bob Margold, Anita Canniba
DIRECTOR MIA DONOVAN IN ATTENDANCE!
Official Selection Hot Docs 2011
Official Selection Montreal International Documentary Festival 2011
In 2004, Lara left for L.A. Her plan was to do a few porn films, make a ton of cash, then move on. Within two months of her arrival, she learned that one of the performers she had sex with on camera was HIV positive. Now so were Lara and two other performers. The news sent shock waves through the adult entertainment industry and became sensational fodder for the news media. But soon enough, everything was back to normal in Pornland and the media forgot about Lara quickly.
When director Mia Donovan first meets Lara, she is in the psychiatric ward of a Montréal hospital. At first reluctant to even turn her camera on for fear of being exploitative, Donovan checks in with Lara over the course of five years. She accompanies her to Los Angeles to meet the key players in her ordeal and to numerous speaking engagements at adult exposition conventions. Over the course of the film, the audience becomes intimately acquainted with the person behind the scandalous headlines and the sometimes sketchy supporting characters who play a role in Lara’s life.
While certainly bleak and tragic, what is fascinating about Inside Lara Roxx is how fearlessly Donovan engages Lara. She eschews the notion of detachment from the start and we end up bearing witness to the bond forming between these two women. It is one of the few beams of light that Donovan lets escape.
– Kevin Monahan
