Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens Debut Ecosexual Fire Film at Cuesta College

Filmmaker/artists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens presented their latest documentary, "Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency" (2025), at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, California, alongside a screening and lecture. The film is the final installment of their documentary trilogy, following "Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story" (2014) and "Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure" (2019). It addresses the 2020 Northern California wildfires that forced over 70,000 evacuations, including the artists' own community of Boulder Creek. The duo combines tragedy with comedy, featuring eco-friendly texting goats, a white peacock narrator, animated volcano montages, and an ecosex scene with a fire fetishist. The film includes a wedding-to-fire ritual officiated by Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Sprinkle and Stephens, who met in 1991 and married in 2002, pioneered the ecosexuality movement in the 2000s, blending environmental preservation with sensuality. The screening coincided with Samantha Nye's exhibition "Web of Love" at the Cuesta College art gallery, a lesbian spoof of a 1966 Scopitone film featuring Sprinkle and Stephens. The film will tour internationally, with stops at German film festivals and a fall premiere at REDCAT in Los Angeles.