Byline: Matthew Odam

MATTHEW ODAM / AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Kyle Henry: "I like those great short story compilations where the writer's worldview is encapsulated in the sum total of experiencing these varied stories." JARRAD HENDERSON / AMERICAN-STATESMAN 2010

Growing up in League City, back when the town was considered little more than the place people stopped to get ice on their way from Houston to Galveston, Kyle Henry would stay up late to get a glimpse of the outside world.

His connection to that world came from watching movies after midnight on TV. Movies of the 1960s and '70s, such as "Midnight Cowboy," helped expand the future filmmaker's worldview and introduced him to ideas of sexuality outside of his bubble.

"I think that was my first intimation that the world was much more complicated than I was being led to believe in my suburban cocoon, pre-Internet," Henry said recently over coffee in Austin. "And it stuck with me that a lot of the work from the '70s - I also love 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' from John Schlesinger - deals with sex in a way that's integrated to the rest of the lives of characters and is integral to the story."

Memories of those films and their honesty inspired Henry and his collaborators, writers Carlos Trevi-o and Jessica Hedrick, to create "Fourplay," a film of four extended vignettes that explore the nuanced vulnerabilities and desires entwined in human sexuality.

Henry, who received a graduate degree from the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas in 1999, thinks mainstream cinema treats sexuality as a commodity and saps the...