Circus of BooksMovies like Circus of Books
- Key Features:
- LGBTQ+, Family dynamics, Documentary, Cultural tradition, Pornography industry, Parent-child relationship, Social commentary, Los Angeles, Historical context, Acceptance, Tolerance, Community, Personal journey
- Tone:
- serious, earnest
- Target Audience:
- Documentary enthusiasts, LGBTQ+ community, Social issue advocates, Cultural history buffs
- Emotional Arc:
- Curiosity → Empathy
Circus of Books

For decades, a nice Jewish couple ran Circus of Books, a porn shop and epicenter for gay LA. Their director daughter documents their life and times.
Circus of Books
A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.

Exuberant, eye-opening movie that serves up a dazzling hundred-year history of the role of gay men and lesbians have had on the silver screen. Film contains fabulous footage from 120 films showing the changing face of cinema sexuality, from cruel stereotypes to covert love to the activist triumphs of the 1990s.

A middle-aged Orthodox Jew, Aaron, living and working in Jerusalem with his wife and children, meets a homeless 19-year-old student. Aaron offers to give Ezri work as his assistant at his family's butcher shop. The two men grow close and their attraction becomes sexual. Aaron must now confront his own sexuality, his feelings for Ezri, and his obligations to his family and faith.

An old Jewish baker struggles to keep his business afloat until his young Muslim apprentice accidentally drops cannabis in the dough and sends sales sky high.

A conservative Midwest businessman ventures into the sordid underworld of pornography in search of his runaway teenage daughter who’s making hardcore films in the pits of Los Angeles.

Vincenzo dedicates his life to the bookshop he owns in Paris and to his daughter Albertine, forced to stay home because of an accident occurred to her a few years earlier. One day Yolande, an exuberant, eccentric, funny and beautiful girl, bursts into Vincenzo’s shop. Charmed by her vital energy, the man starts feeling again emotions he’s been chocking-off for too long, and which will make him question his melancholic and somehow suspended way of facing life.

9to5 - Days in Porn focuses on the people behind a controversial and multi-billion dollar industry "The Adult Entertainment industry". It depicts their stories, each one different, unadorned and authentic, without glorification or prejudice. It delivers deep insight into their personal lives - from glamorous to grotesque - strange, fascinating, offensive, absurd and sometimes funny moments all at once.

It’s 2006, YouTube is in its infancy, and internet porn is still behind a paywall. Taking the stage name Brent Corrigan, a fresh-faced, wannabe adult video performer is molded into a star by Stephen, a closeted gay porn mogul who runs the skin flick empire Cobra Video from his seemingly ordinary suburban home.

Two gay men living in St. Tropez have their lives turned upside down when the son of one of the men announces he is getting married. They try to conceal their lifestyle and their ownership of the drag club downstairs when the fiancée and her parents come for dinner.

Never before have we watched as much porn as today yet the traditional porn industry is dying. The arrival of web sites showing amateur clips has transformed the way porn is made and consumed. Behind this transformation lies one opaque multinational.

New York photographer Ronit flies to London after learning about the death of her estranged father. Ronit is returning to the same Orthodox Jewish community that shunned her decades earlier for her childhood attraction to Esti, a female friend. Their fortuitous and happy reunion soon reignites their burning passion as the two women explore the boundaries of faith and sexuality.

A novelist fed up with the establishment profiting from "Black" entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.

Italy, 1970. An increasing legion of harmless warriors begins a peaceful struggle for sexual freedom through pornography, shaking and shocking religious authorities and conservative political institutions. They are ironic, happy, crazy. They are dreamers, defenders of definitive communion between body and soul. But they were censored and humiliated. They were mistreated and arrested for demanding loud a new cultural renaissance.

The movie follows a group of young friends in the city of Tel Aviv and is as much a love song to the city as it is an exploration of the claim that people in Tel Aviv are isolated from the rest of the country and the turmoil it's going through. The movie looks at young people's lives in Tel Aviv through the POVs of gays and straights, Jews and Arabs, men and women.

Documentary examining what happens to some of the biggest names in the history of the adult entertainment industry after they leave the business and try and live "normal" lives.

A fidgety, wisecracking video store clerk develops a fixation on a particularly reclusive customer, a frequent visitor to the pornography section of Cinefile, the video store where he works in Los Angeles. After multiple failures to impress her during their brief daily transactions, he finds her street address in the store's database, drives to her apartment building and initiates an unconventional campaign to win her affections.

The erotic novelist Taeko is writing a morbid story of a family destroyed by incest, murder and abuse. Her assistant, Yuji, sets on a mission to uncover the reality of this story, but the reality might be too much to bear.

A devout Mormon living in L.A. becomes a pornographic actor after his martial arts moves impress a big-time director.

This comical love story follows the story of A.J. Fikry, whose life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history and now his prized possession, a rare edition of Poe poems, has been stolen. He’s given up on people and even the books in his store offer another reminder that the world is changing too rapidly. But when a mysterious package arrives at the store, it gives Fikry the chance to make his life over and see things anew.

The dawn of the 20th century: L’Apollonide, a luxurious and traditional brothel in Paris, is living its last days. In this closed world, where some men fall in love and others become viciously harmful, the women share their secrets, their fears, their joys and their pains.

Amy, a naive college graduate who believes she's destined to be a great poet, begrudgingly accepts a job at a sex shop while she pursues a mentorship with reclusive writer Rat Billings.

When Syd, a young editor at an influential art magazine, becomes involved with her neighbor, a drug-addicted lesbian photographer, both seek to exploit each other for their respective careers while slowly falling in love with each other.

Two con artists have spent 26 years training their only daughter to swindle, scam and steal at every turn. During a desperate and hastily conceived heist, they charm a stranger into joining them, only to have their entire world turned upside down.

A conservative church-choir director moves from Texas to San Francisco to run her deceased gay son's drag club.

Ten years after the first American Pie movie, three new hapless virgins discover the Bible hidden in the school library at East Great Falls High. Unfortunately for them, the book is ruined, and with incomplete advice, the Bible leads them on a hilarious journey to lose their virginity.

A fresh face comes to Hollywood to act in movies but only the gay porn studios are eager to provide him with work.

Book superstore magnate, Joe Fox and independent book shop owner, Kathleen Kelly fall in love in the anonymity of the Internet—both blissfully unaware that he's trying to put her out of business.

A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.

The porn industry has grown from a product purchased on the sly, to be sold on newsstands in the daily press. "La piel vendida" aims to open a window to this film. His actors, actresses, directors, producers ... tell us their profession from the lights and shadows of a cinema by dint of being explicit in its imagery and themes, is hidden in their motivations: the viewer and their protagonists.

A former porn director, who once elevated the genre with 1960s counter-culture ideals, returns to filmmaking after 20 years, clashing with his producer's hard-core vision. Estranged from his son over the family business, they begin reconnecting as the son embraces political activism, while the director seeks personal renewal.

Flamboyantly gay Austrian television reporter Bruno stirs up trouble with unsuspecting guests and large crowds through brutally frank interviews and painfully hilarious public displays of homosexuality.

College student Danielle must cover her tracks when she unexpectedly runs into her sugar daddy at a shiva - with her parents, ex-girlfriend and family friends also in attendance.

The evolution of adult cinema through the most influential films in history, a journey that begins in the 1970s and ends nowadays. An in-depth analysis of the success of the most prestigious erotic films, their impact on industry and society, and their influence on cinema and contemporary culture.

This documentary about the culture of intense cinephilia in New York City reveals the impassioned world of five obsessed movie buffs. These human encyclopedias of cinema see two to five films a day, and from 600 to 2,000 films per year. This is the story of their lives, their memories, their unbending habits and the films they love.

A Polish-Jewish family comes to the U.S. at the beginning of the twentieth century. There, the family and their children try to make themselves a better future in the so-called promised land.

An experimental, psychedelic odyssey through Japanese subculture experienced via the eyes of a disillusioned young man, who must contend with intense familial dysfunction, psychosexual alienation, and existentialist malaise.

Circus owner Matt Masters is beset by disasters as he attempts a European tour of his circus. At the same time, he is caught in an emotional bind between his adopted daughter and her mother.

When a change of circumstances leaves Miriam unable to pay her college tuition, she makes a surprising decision: to start performing in adult films, using the pseudonym Belle Knox. Miriam lies to her family and her friends at school, keeping her double life a secret. But soon rumours spread and Miriam becomes the subject of vicious online attacks and unwanted attention. Miriam fights back: she talks to the media, saying her new line of work empowers her as a feminist. But her confident stand has unintended consequences. Miriam is shunned by her conservative family and her colleagues in the adult film world. One impulsive decision has quickly spiralled out of control - and Miriam's problems are just beginning.

Story of a couple that starts the first legal brothel in Nevada and a boxer they own a piece of.

Michalina Wislocka, the most famous and recognized sexologist of communist Poland, fights for the right to publish her book, which will change the sex life of Polish people forever.

Eugene, a young teenage Jewish boy, recalls his memoirs of his time as an adolescent youth. He lives with his parents, his aunt, two cousins, and his brother, Stanley, whom he looks up to and admires. He goes through the hardships of puberty, sexual fantasy, and living the life of a poor boy in a crowded house.

For a book project, photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders took photographs of 30 stars of adult movies, each pair of photographs in the same pose, clothed and nude. This film records the photo shoots and includes interviews with the performers and commentary from eight writers (and John Waters). The actors and writers discuss economics, nudity and exhibitionism, careers, and private lives.

A woman employs a gay man to spend four nights at her house to watch her when she's "unwatchable".

A successful gay male escort describes in a series of confessions his tangled romantic relationships with his two roommates and an older, enigmatic male client.

Paul Raymond builds a porn, entertainment and real estate empire that makes him the wealthiest man in Britain, but drugs doom his beloved daughter, Debbie.

Kicked out by his parents, a gay teenager leaves small-town Indiana for New York's Greenwich Village, where growing discrimination against the gay community leads to riots on June 28, 1969.

Exhibit A tells the timely story of a normal family disintegrating under financial pressure. All is not as it seems as the King family go about their day-to-day lives oblivious of the horror to come. Dad Andy (Bradley Cole) is nursing a secret that ultimately leads to terrible consequences for them all. We witness these chilling events unfold through daughter Judith's video camera, which subsequently becomes Exhibit A.

A mousy librarian inherits her father's beloved but failing old movie house. In order to save the family business, she discovers her inner serial killer — and a legion of rabid gore fans — when she starts turning out a series of grisly shorts. What her fans don't realize yet is that the murders in the movies are all too real…

Journalist David Farrier stumbles upon a mysterious tickling competition online. As he delves deeper he comes up against fierce resistance, but that doesn’t stop him getting to the bottom of a story stranger than fiction.

Inspired by actual events in the late nineties when Hasidic Jews were recruited as mules to smuggle ecstasy from Europe into the United States.

A sexual wellness company gains fame and followers, then members come forward with shocking allegations.

A chronicle of the life of a middle-class French girl's sexual adventures, her then fall into prostitution, and her ultimate redemption.

"Slice of life" take on life of international porn celebrity, Moon, and her musings on modern life, love and loss.

Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach works dead-end jobs to support his sister and her son. Questioning his life, he paints, surfs and hangs out with his best friend, Gabe. When Gabe's older brother returns home for the summer, Zach suddenly finds himself drawn into a relationship he didn't expect.

A routine trick propels a tall, dark, cynical hustler into a series of life-changing encounters in this drama. But this amicable and sexually efficient rent boy begins to look at himself differently when he finds himself lost in a maze-like apartment building. As he wanders through the building, he tricks with a variety of johns; sex is the commonality, but out of that commodity comes raw, unguarded emotions for all.

Featuring interviews with performers, activists and past employees, this documentary offers a deep dive into the successes and scandals of Pornhub.

Maggie, a quiet retiring grandmother, finds herself helpless as her grandson’s health deteriorates. When one last chance appears, but money is desperately short, Maggie acts to raise the cash in a fashion that surprises everyone but her.

Heidi, who initially left her small town of Pleasant Valley with the dream of one day becoming a successful painter, has put her own art on hold to excel as an art gallery curator. Now, a week before the gallery’s big Christmas party, she must return home to watch her niece and nephew. She comes face to face with her high school love, Chris, now a teacher, and offers to help him find a new last-minute location for the Christmas dance.

Documentary filmmaker Erik and closeted lawyer Paul meet through a casual encounter, but they find a deeper connection and become a couple. Individually and together, they are risk takers — compulsive, and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity and to be true to himself.

Gabriel is a young, aspiring musical composer whose life seems stuck in the First Act. When his new musical number gets a critical reception, a theatre colleague, Perry, tells Gabriel that he needs to get a life before he can write about one – so he heads straight for his local gay bar.

After leaving Washington D.C. hospital, plastic surgeon Ben Stone heads for California, where a lucrative practice in Beverly Hills awaits. After a car accident, he's sentenced to perform as the community's general practitioner.

19 year old Linnéa leaves her small town in Sweden and heads for Los Angeles with the aim of becoming the world's next big porn star, but the road to her goal turns out to be bumpier than she imagined.

In 1951, Marcus Messner, a working-class Jewish student from New Jersey, attends a small Ohio college, where he struggles with anti-Semitism, sexual repression, and the ongoing Korean War.

A gay cabaret owner and his drag queen partner agree to put up a false heterosexual front so that their son can introduce them to his fiancée's conservative parents.

Set in 1973 Spain, a struggling encyclopedia salesman and his wife take advantage of an offer to make adult films. The act turns him into an aspring legit filmmaker and her into an international sex symbol.

After graduating from film school, Aura returns to New York to live with her photographer mother, Siri, and her sister, Nadine, who has just finished high school. Aura is directionless and wonders where to go next in her career and her life. She takes a job in a restaurant and tries unsuccessfully to develop relationships with men, including Keith, a chef where she works, and cult Internet star Jed.

This documentary from Albert and David Maysles follows the bitter rivalry of four door-to-door salesmen working for the Mid-American Bible Company: Paul "The Badger" Brennan, Charles "The Gipper" McDevitt, James "The Rabbit" Baker and Raymond "The Bull" Martos. Times are tough for this hard-living quartet, who spend their days traveling through small-town America, trying their best to peddle gold-leaf Bibles to an apathetic crowd of lower-middle-class housewives and elderly couples.

Lea and her husband Marc have known Francis and his wife Karine for a very long time. Over the years, each one of them has been assigned a specific role. The balance and dynamic of the group is blown up when Lea decides to write a novel, which turns into an immediate bestseller…

A street priest struggling to save his church learns his late uncle left him a small business that could turn his fortune around: he'll soon realize that said business is in fact... a brothel!

A retelling of the biblical book of Hosea set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush of 1850.

Lifelong platonic friends Zack and Miri look to solve their respective cash-flow problems by making an adult film together. As the cameras roll, however, the duo begin to sense that they may have more feelings for each other than they previously thought.

After Porn Ends 2 picks up where its predecessor left off and not only turns back the clock to meet the oldest living stars in adult film's history, but goes in depth with some of Its most current retirees and juxtaposes their experiences in a life after porn. Delving deeper into society's ongoing stigmas of race, misogyny, and the reality of decreasing opportunities for these former VHS box cover stars. For some, their careers in adult entertainment is accepted proudly and without regret. In fact, it seems to have proven to be the pathway to their current happiness and inner peace. For others, however, a career in porn has proven to be a conduit to certain despair as they struggle to find a way to bury their past and emerge with a new career or calling.

Three generations of a French family open up about their sexual experiences and desires after young Romain is caught masturbating in his biology class.

A thrilling journey through legends, belief and folklore, this film goes behind the scenes with the British Library as they search to tell that story through objects in their collection, in an ambitious new exhibition: Harry Potter: A History Of Magic. J.K. Rowling, who is lending unseen manuscripts, drawings and drafts from her private archives (which will sit alongside treasures from the British Library, as well as original drafts and drawings from Jim Kay) talks about some of the personal items she has lent to the exhibition and gives new insight into her writing, looking at some of the objects from the exhibition that have fired her imagination.

A documentary about the rise and fall of the Cannon Film Group, the legendary independent film company helmed by Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

A hyper-repressed and schlubby accountant (Jonas Chernick) strikes a deal with a worldly but disorganized stripper (Emily Hampshire): he'll help her with her crushing debt if she helps him become a better lover.

A same-sex couple move to a small town so they can enjoy a better quality of life and raise their 16 year-old daughter with the best social values. But nothing is as it seems in their picturesque neighbourhood. And when Malik sees the folks next door throwing a very strange party, something very shocking has got to give.

It's Christmas Eve in Tinseltown and Sin-Dee is back on the block. Upon hearing that her pimp boyfriend hasn't been faithful during the 28 days she was locked up, the working girl and her best friend, Alexandra, embark on a mission to get to the bottom of the scandalous rumor. Their rip-roaring odyssey leads them through various subcultures of Los Angeles, including an Armenian family dealing with their own repercussions of infidelity.

Ned is in the throes of a mid-life crisis. His work as a writer on an outrageous, semi-pornographic TV show is less than satisfying. His fifteen year old son has just told him he is gay and his eleven year old is afraid of, well pretty much everything. When his wife, Jeannie, moves her sick and embittered father from Detroit into their home in NY, it puts added stress on an already strained marriage. And when a sexy female co-worker puts the moves on Ned, the temptation sends him spiraling.

A photographer and her best friend are roommates. She is stuck with small-change shooting jobs and dreams of success. When her roommate decides to get married and leave, she feels hurt and has to learn how to deal with living alone.

On the outskirts of Brooklyn, Frankie, an aimless teenager, suffocates under the oppressive glare cast by his family and a toxic group of delinquent friends. Struggling with his own identity, Frankie begins to scour hookup sites for older men.

Studio 54 was the epicenter of 70s hedonism - a place that not only redefined the nightclub, but also came to symbolize an entire era. Its co-owners, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, two friends from Brooklyn, seemed to come out of nowhere to suddenly preside over a new kind of New York society. Now, 39 years after the velvet rope was first slung across the club's hallowed threshold, a feature documentary tells the real story behind the greatest club of all time.

Shirin is struggling to become an ideal Persian daughter, politically correct bisexual and hip young Brooklynite but fails miserably in her attempt at all identities.

Lis is a teenager whose dream is to become a circus artist and leave her hometown, even if she knows that to do it she’ll have to fight her side against her parents. It’s summer and she spends her days playing with her friends and flirting with her boyfriend, a few years older than herself. The lack of privacy and the neighbours’ gossip force Lis to keep their relationship secret so that her parents won’t find out. A relationship which change her live forever.

When her parents' financial problems threaten Ashley's dreams for college, the high school whiz kid takes matters into her own hands. She and her girlfriends turn their babysitting business into a wildly successful escort service for dads. But in this small suburban community, nothing stays secret for long.

Guy Carter, an insecure expectant father unable to find work in his field, accepts a job driving hookers around Los Angeles. One long and crazy evening proves to our hero that he is, in fact, up to the task of fatherhood.

Sex and love. Some seek it, some need it, some spurn it and some pay for it, but we're all involved in it. Set on one afternoon on Hampstead Heath in north-west London, the film investigates the minutiae of seven couples. What makes us tick?

Fresh to Las Vegas with no connections, Nomi Malone takes a job as an exotic dancer. Her talents are quickly noticed by Cristal, a headlining dancer who senses an opportunity to bolster her own act. But Nomi won’t play second fiddle and soon begins her venomous path to the top, ruthlessly backstabbing anyone who gets in her way.

Romance novelist Emilia is a whirlwind who blows back into the lives of her adult children, Taylor and Zach, under the pretense of a book signing arranged by her hometown's local book shop. As Emilia tries to reconnect, Taylor and Zach explore new and past relationships through an app that boasts old-fashioned human connection by way of the classified ad. Zach is given a chance to heal old wounds while Taylor matches with a woman that changes the way she's always thought about love.

Further adventures of Bobby, Benji, and Huey in their pursuit of sex in the 50's. While preparing for their final exams, they try to work out if it's better to be going steady with one girl, and if changing girlfriends all the time leads to too many complications. This leads to frustrations with girls who wont go all the way, and problems with girls will go all the way with anyone!

Imagine your life is somewhat complete with a house, job, and wife but then your best friend from college comes knocking at your door at 2 AM. During a pot-induced hedonistic party, a plan is hatched between the two friends to create an Art Film of “two really straight men having sex.” If they only knew how much this would affect all of their lives.

Jody Balaban, an aspiring filmmaker, is fresh to L.A. with New York film school accolades and the dream of making her movie. Unable to get a job where she can use the skills she so finely honed, Jody must edit adult entertainment to make ends meet. The uncompromising desire to make her movie, leads Jody to secretly film in the porn studio facilities at night - until she is caught in the act.

After Porn Ends 3 continues to explore whether a career as an adult performer is inherently damaging to the balance of a perfomer's life once retired.

Charlie gets released from an insane asylum and moves in with Miranda, the young daughter he left behind. Charlie believes that there is treasure hidden beneath the local Costco, so he puts together a plan to unearth the loot. By convincing Miranda to quit her job at McDonald's and instead work at the wholesale store, he is able to obtain a key. Although Miranda is skeptical, she helps her father with his irrational quest.

A Baltimore teenager who picks up a second-hand camera starts snapping his way to stardom, soon turning into a nationwide sensation, with a fateful choice between his life and his art.

Henry, an English writer who has written a new book that has become a failure in the U.K, gets notified that the dull book has been highly trending over in Mexico. Little does he know that Maria, a Spanish translator, turned the book into an erotic novel. Henry and Maria then swerve around Mexico to do a book tour and go through a wind of events.

A Serbian ballroom dancer experiences an unexpected and intense 24-hour romance with a friend's older brother.

Six outwardly average individuals have elaborate fetishes they indulge with surreptitious care. A mousy letter carrier makes dough balls she grotesquely ingests before bed. A shop clerk fixates on a TV news reader while he builds a machine to massage and masturbate him. One of his customers makes an elaborate chicken costume for a voodoo-like scene with a doll resembling his plump neighbor. She, in turn, has a doll that resembles him, which she whips and dominates in an abandoned church. The TV news reader has her own fantasy involving carp. Her husband, who is indifferent to her, steals materials to fashion elaborate artifacts that he rubs, scrapes and rolls across his body.

A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.
