Confronting New Documentary Illuminates and Entertains
By Gordon David Durich & Valerie Milano
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 9/17/26 – Both profound and powerful, Playing With Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency, premiering September 26 at REDCAT in Los Angeles, is both climatic and climactic.
The provocative documentary is the final installment in a trilogy by artists, activists and longtime partners Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle. (You’ve got to love Sprinkle’s last name!)
During a recent Zoom conversation with The Hollywood Times, Stephens and Sprinkle spoke about the deeply personal origins of the film, their philosophy of ecosexuality and why they believe pleasure, humor and community can play an important role in confronting environmental catastrophe.
Click below for our exclusive interview:
At the heart of their work is ecosexuality, the idea of loving the Earth not simply as “Mother Earth,” but as a lover, and recognizing that human beings are part of nature rather than separate from it.
The concept for Playing With Fire was sparked by the women’s frightening experience of having to evacuate their Northern California redwood forest home during devastating wildfires. Faced with a climate crisis that suddenly became immediate and deeply personal, their lives, home and creative work were profoundly affected.
Yet the filmmakers do not approach fire simply as a destructive force.
During the interview, Stephens and Sprinkle discussed fire as something transformative, a force capable of devastation, certainly, but also one connected to renewal, regeneration and even the beginnings of civilization.
“Fire is one of our greatest teachers,” they have said. “It can destroy, but it can also illuminate a path forward.”
Their approach to environmental activism is equally unconventional. The pair describe themselves as pleasure activists, preferring to invite, and even seduce, people into caring about the environment through love, art, humor, sexuality and inclusiveness rather than relying solely on fear and catastrophe.
That inclusiveness is important to their work. Stephens and Sprinkle have long embraced people who might otherwise find themselves outside traditional environmental movements, including members of the LGBTQ+ community, drag performers, sex workers and other artists and activists living on society’s fringes.
Beth Stephens is a professor of media art and performance at UC Santa Cruz. Annie Sprinkle is a performance artist, sex educator, activist, director and actor. Together, they are a creative and personal force whose work challenges audiences to rethink not only environmentalism, but humanity’s relationship with the natural world.
As a documentary producer myself, I found Playing With Fire enlightening, and, more importantly, it changed my own perception of fire, which has long been a personal trigger.
That may be one of the film’s greatest strengths. Rather than reducing wildfire to destruction alone, Stephens and Sprinkle allow room for fear, grief, transformation and even humor.
They also emphasize something increasingly important in the face of environmental disasters: community care. When catastrophe strikes, survival is not solely an individual experience. Communities come together, help one another, grieve together and ultimately begin the process of rebuilding.
Blending experiences of loss and grief with a welcome dash of humor, Playing With Fire demands attention while refusing to surrender to despair.
The film completes an ecosexual cinematic trilogy that also includes Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story and Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure. Stephens and Sprinkle are also the authors of Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover.
Their latest work asks audiences to look directly at one of nature’s most frightening forces and consider a challenging possibility: perhaps fire is not only something to fear, but something from which we can learn.
In the words of Wendell Berry: “The Earth is what we all have in common.”
Playing With Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency
September 26 at REDCAT, Los Angeles
https://www.redcat.org/events/playing-fire-ecosexual-emergency
University of Minnesota Press: upress.umn.edu
