Returning to Sundance Film Festival earlier this after her Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp, Nicole Newnham’s latest film explores the strange tale of Shere Hite and her 1976 bestseller The Hite Report as narrated by Dakota Johnson. The book famously liberated the female orgasm by revealing the most private experiences of thousands of anonymous survey respondents. Her findings rocked the American establishment and presaged current conversations about gender, sexuality, and bodily autonomy. Then, she disappeared. Ahead of a release next month from IFC Films, the first trailer has now arrived.
“It was a bombshell when it was published,” Newnham told Deadline. “The whole American public is sitting there thinking that if women were not having an orgasm through intercourse, there was something wrong with them. And Shere Hite is the one who finally comes out and says that’s not true… It really was such a profound thing in that it liberated people and presented a completely different, better, more inclusive type of sexual relationship for people to choose. And at the same time, it was like shooting an arrow right into the heart of the patriarchal power structure.”
See the trailer below.
The Disappearance of Shere Hite opens on November 17.