Thursday's Pick: Independent Erotic Film Festival

We can always count on Good Vibrations for two things: to help us learn more about sex and sexuality - and to keep us from taking it all too seriously. So it is with the Independent Erotic Film Festival. Every year the San Francisco retail institution gathers short erotic films from around the world and screens the best of what they find. This year local drag favorite Peaches Christ joins Good Vibes' staff sexologist Carol Queen in showing us what people think is hot in seven minutes or less. According to what we've seen from the stills and what Queen tells us from helping choose the winners, these go beyond amateur porn. Instead of thinking of it as what your neighbors might do with a Handycam, says Queen, "Think of it as what they might do if they had sophisticated equipment and the ability to storyboard their sex lives." And then there's the humor. One film, for example, is a parody of a sci-fi favorite (wonder if you can guess which one) called "The Filth Element." Another is a music video. Still others explore alternative takes on eroticism and sexuality, including same-sex encounters and a couple looking for a third person to join them. The screening is preceded by a party that includes live mariachi music, margaritas, and burlesque performers.