Hollywood has its eye on the Toronto Film Festival, where prestige films like The Danish Girl and The Lobster are screening.

But back in L.A., a different kind of movie showcase is about to launch.

Running September 17 to 20, the Antebellum Film Festival aims to further the idea of kink as art–explicit, exciting, titillating art.

That's par for the course when you're fetish photographer Rick Castro, who's producing the second-annual series of uncensored works "with fetish and sexual identity as subtext."

The point of the festival, as well as the art gallery of the same name Castro opened in 2005, is to give an outlet to artists whose works you'd never at the local cineplex—even if leather, ropes and kink have invaded film, television and advertising.

Christina K. Court's High Shine, for example, explores the little-seen world of female bootblacks, who keep the leather spick-and-span at an S&;M club.

William Friedkin's controversial 1980 drama Cruising, meanwhile, sees a killer loose in New York's gay leather scene.

In Haftanlage 4614, director Jan Soldat's chronicles men who submit to various forms of torture in self-made prisons.

Warhol muse Joe Dallesandro is on display (literally) in some explicit "home movies" from the 1960s, featuring the actor and another man having sex in various locations.

And in Carl(a), a trans prostitute works to get money to pay for her transition but is afraid how her boyfriend will react. (Laverne Cox costars.)

Castro, who co-directed Bruce LaBruce's kinky Hustler White, has a film in the festival, too: The 2001 short Plushies & Furries, about those costume-based fetish communities.

"Fetish is part of everyday culture," Castro told us. "Antebellum refines this on a daily basis by presenting original artists and ideas without censorship. [And we give] a voice to filmmakers that other festivals would be afraid to screen."

Check out the Antebellum Film Festival's full lineup at the official website.