RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) — Rio, no stranger to the follies of the flesh, is set to get even raunchier this week when a festival of erotic cartoons splashes across screens in a city cinema.
The three-day International Festival of Erotic Animation is to kick off Tuesday. It will screen a total 49 shorts and two features for a public that will vote for the winner.
Australian, Croatian, Dutch, French, Israeli and US animations will be shown alongside a hefty slate of Brazilian and other Latin American works, all of them focused on the themes of love, erotica and sex, the organizers said.
Some of the cartoons will be available online on the festival's website (www.fiae.com.br).
It is the second edition of the festival, which last year was inaugurated in an old pornography cinema in Rio.
This year, it has taken over the much larger Movies Odeon BR complex in an area known as Movieland because of its packed-together theaters.
One example from the program is a US short, "The Adventures of Baxter and McGuire," whose description is: "The closest of pals who never leave each other's side. They also just happen to be testicles."
Another is Australia's "Granny Queer," about a lesbian grandmother who suspects the neighbor is stealing her underwear.
Others, from Brazil, seem self-explanatory with the titles "Nymphomaniac" and "Paraxedes, a Spermatozoid."
Alexander Mello, one of the organizers of the festival, insisted the event was not all about titillation.
"This year, we managed to get works that tackle political subjects and talk about sexual options in a serious way," he said.
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