ABOUT FILM

. One afternoon, while I was self-pleasuring with a healing intention to connect with myself, I saw myself being filmed doing exactly that. I saw women around the world watching this film to see what is possible when they come into this kind of intentional intimacy with themselves.

I work with women around the world — United States, Middle East, Australia, the Netherlands, Asia — who feel disconnected from their body. They are detached from their passion, their purpose, their creativity, their sex, and even their joy; women who are afraid to ask what they want, to set boundaries, to speak their truth, even with their most intimate life-partner or friends. I have witnessed these same women transform their lives in empowering ways.  A huge part of that empowerment comes from Pleasure, from connecting with the wisdom in every cell of their body.

As a woman, I know how we have collectively pushed our sexuality into the shadows in the name of survival. By going into the realm of our sexuality in a safe and loving way, we discover an Aliveness that has been dormant, waiting to be utilized. When you reclaim your human right to connect with your own body and it's incredible senses, you reclaim Life. I believe this wholeheartedly, because I have seen it transform my own life, again and again.

Bringing this film to life is the scariest, craziest thing I’ve ever done, but the Why is so much bigger than my fear.

Thank you for visiting our film.

Producer, Lillian Claire Love

Cosmic Touch is my second documentary short film that I would categorize as “holy erotica”. As a former church camp purity pastor with a narrow view of sexuality and God, I had a lot to learn. My wife and I both endured a 15-year sexless marriage stunted by religious shame. We loved each other deeply and the God we both knew intimately, but something was still disconnecting us from ourselves. During that time in my marriage, pornography was the only means for me to educate myself and build my self-confidence. Unfortunately, it had an inverse effect. I wish I had more options, but the resources I found from my church community offered very little than what I already knew, and what I knew from my faith already shamed me so very deeply. It was, in fact, what I needed to heal from.
After attending a Tantra class in New York, I had a profound encounter with God in a filipino restaurant in Queens. It was a shared experience with a dear friend and colleague of mine who is a professor and therapist. As a Christian, I liken this experience to Saul encountering Christ on the road to Damascus before he became Paul. I was changed, but didn’t know how. I felt connected to every thing around me: to other people, to the wind and trees, to every molecule in the air. I could feel the ecstatic connection between all the things, and somehow, inexplicably, it made sense. My body was online! But my mind, which spent years as a self-studied theologian and a servant to God in ministry, was as lost and clueless as a child.
I had an insatiable desire to understand this mystery. However, my body still had a trauma that prevented this mission. My upbringing in purity culture, my sex-less marriage, and my forgotten trauma of being molested repeatedly as a child, all contributed to a clinical fear of sex and women. I would freeze, hyper-ventilate, lash out in rage, and tremble. It was physically impossible for me to normal. I felt incapable. This is why I picked up my camera.

Filmmaking is a means for me to confront my deepest fears and curiosities. It is a means for me to experience, to re-visit those experience through the footage, and to re-express them through editing as my worship. It is a means for me to witness myself, to alchemize emotions, and create space. Filmmaking is how I heal.

When I met Lillian on Facebook, I was following an unknown curiosity in my body. I shared her my first film Just For One Day, and immediately, she knew I was the right filmmaker for a vision she had yet to disclose to me. When she told me her vision, I received it with all the emotions you could imagine: excitement, fear, horror, and shame. When I was married, I watched pornographic content featuring women self-pleasuring, and I always had mixed feelings. I desperately wanted to witness something genuine and loving so I could learn something true. Instead, I felt emasculated, used, and shame. I just wanted to connect with my wife. But deeper than that, I unknowingly wanted to connect to myself.

It would be another two years into our friendship before Lillian and I shot Cosmic Touch. And another two years of editing and waiting before we both felt strong enough to share it to the world. This film was not made for money. We wanted to keep our intentions pure. This film healed us.

Cosmic Touch shows how one woman navigates through her sexual trauma to reach healing ecstasy. This film serves as a reference point, a visual example for those lost in a labyrinth of sexual shame.

Unfortunately, pornography and mainstream media has depicted a very narrow and shallow view of sex. At its best, sex is depicted as an enjoyable experience as simple and mechanical as eating ice cream. We are rarely shown its spiritual heights and its traumatic depths. Doing so could be triggering and confronting, but also inspiring and healing. Without these distinctions, we are only experiencing a fraction of what we are capable of as Divine beings. Sex is mysterious. It is limitless. It carries both the power to create life and the tenderness of mortality. It is as simple and as infinite as God Himself/Herself. In my experience, sexual healing is a spiritual experience, the crucifixion and the resurrection of the Self.

As director of Cosmic Touch, it is my hope that we present a new distinction of what sex can be on a spiritual level. Without a clear example of how some navigate through sexual trauma, most fall short of their own hard-earned breakthroughs. Cosmic Touch helps viewers map their way through the labyrinth of shame. By witnessing a woman self-pleasure without a partner, viewers gain clarity regarding how their partners have helped or hindered their own healing process. Cosmic Touch also reveals how media has limited our understanding of sexuality.

Director, Nathanael L. Novero

Cosmic Touch also features co-filmmaker Cassandra Smolcic, a multi-talented graphic designer, writer, and a #MeToo bell-ringer, who fiercely fights for and defends the feminine in a male-dominated work world as a sex abuse survivor herself. By including another woman as a filmmaker, Cosmic Touch creates a safe dialogue between women, an authentic dialogue that is witnessed by men. Cassandra is currently digital nomad who lives and works around the world as an artist. She coined the term “docu-therapy” for Cosmic Touch, a hybrid term of documentary filmmaking and therapy.