Visionary Feminist Who Fought Censorship is Subject of New Film
“SEX RADICAL,” a documentary-drama about Ida Craddock, a pioneer in the struggle for free expression and women’s reproductive rights, will premiere at the Michigan Theater, Ann Arbor, MI on October 30, 2025 at 8PM.
Tickets are available at bit.ly/sexradicaltix. Press photos are available at bit.ly/3HNKgPC
The film will also be available for streaming from Oct. 31 - Nov. 4 only through the Show&Tell film platform at bit.ly/sexradicalstream.
ANN ARBOR, MI (September 1, 2025) - For Immediate Release
New laws limit access to abortion and threaten doctors with prison. Religious zealots and opportunistic politicians team up to ban books about sex and to “protect” children from their “corrupting” influence. Sound familiar? Welcome to America in the late 19th-century under the Comstock Act, a federal law that sharply limited contraception, abortion, and the distribution of virtually any information about sex.
SEX RADICAL, the latest film from award-winning writer/director Andy Kirshner, tells the story of one woman who dared to challenge that law, and its namesake, the puritanical “vice-hunter” and U.S. postal inspector, Anthony Comstock. Ida Craddock was a late-Victorian sex educator, scholar, and Spiritualist who defied Comstock, face-to-face. Defending the right of a woman to “control her own person,” Craddock risked everything by publishing frank instructional pamphlets about sex. Though arrested multiple times, sentenced to prison, committed to an asylum, and forced to turn over her books for burning, Craddock was undeterred in her fight for women’s sexual equality and her own First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion. The feminist icon, Emma Goldman, called her “one of the bravest champions of Women’s Emancipation,” and Craddock’s was the very first case to be taken up by the Free Speech League, a forerunner to modern civil liberties groups like the ACLU and PEN America.
Actor Emily-Sutton Smith in a dream-sequence from SEX RADICAL.
Drawing on archival documents — including diaries, letters, newspaper accounts, and the preeminent “sex reform” journals of the period — Kirshner used Craddock’s own words as the basis for the screenplay. The tale of her nine-year personal struggle against Comstock’s censorship is recounted through a unique mixture of archival film, eyewitness testimony, dream sequences, and stylized reenactments. Emily Sutton-Smith plays Craddock, Joey Albright plays Anthony Comstock, and Priscilla Lindsay plays Emma Goldman, a contemporary of Craddock’s who serves as the film’s narrator.
Speaking of the film’s relevance for our own time, Kirshner says,
When I first started working on SEX RADICAL, I was struck, not only by Ida Craddock’s powerful story, but also by how closely the “culture wars” of the late 19th-century resemble the “culture wars” of today. Those social conflicts were also largely about sexuality and gender, and about the role that religion should or should not play in public life. But frankly, I never dreamed that the 1873 Comstock “obscenity” Law would be experiencing a revival in 2025. However, since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, anti-abortion activists have been calling for a renewed enforcement of the statute as a means of effecting a national ban on medication abortion. In fact, they have recently cited this 150-year-old “zombie” law in “wrongful death” lawsuits against abortion providers. It’s astonishing – but maybe not so astonishing if one takes a longer view of American History.
The film was developed, in part, as a research project funded by the Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the School of Music, Theatre & Dance at the University of Michigan, where Kirshner is Professor Emeritus of Music and Art & Design. The October premiere is being sponsored by Michigan’s Stamps School of Art & Design, the Center for the Education of Women+, and the James and Anne Duderstadt Center, where much of the movie was filmed. An accomplished composer as well as filmmaker, Kirshner’s previous work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Michigan Council on Arts and Cultural Affairs, and the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan.
Tickets for the October 30 screening in Ann Arbor can be purchased at bit.ly/sexradicaltix. Tickets to watch the film online between Oct. 31 - Nov. 4 can be purchased at bit.ly/sexradicalstream.
The historic Michigan Theatre is a part of Marquee Arts, and is located at 603 E. Liberty St., Ann Arbor, MI.
More information about the film is available at www.sexradicalmovie.com
More information about Andy Kirshner is available at www.andykirshner.com
Film trailer is here: Watch Trailer
Press photos are here: Get photos
For a full preview screener of the 76 minute film, please contact brenna@newhistoryfilms
CONTACT: Brenna Murphy, brenna@newhistoryfilms.com, 734-936-0671