He is a lecturer, a filmmaker, and a recovering sex addict. Although a shy man in demeanor, when the camera points in his direction he transforms into a bold storyteller.

Part-time SF State cinema lecturer Caveh Zahedi’s, 45, recent film, “I Am a Sex Addict,” is an autobiographical portrayal of his battle with sex addiction that cost him two marriages and countless relationships. The film opened at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco April 5.

Written and directed by Zahedi himself, “I Am a Sex Addict,” won the Gotham Award in November for “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” in New York as a special award distributed by Filmmaker Magazine.

“I believed from the start that there hadn’t been a film like it, and it was important to make,” said Greg Watkins, who was a producer and cinematographer for the film. He is also a lecturer at Stanford University.

After several failed attempts over the course of 10 years trying to make the film, Zahedi began shooting the final version of “I Am a Sex Addict” in 2001, with a budget of $50,000 from executive producer Richard Clark. Zahedi also raised a portion of the film’s budget from grants. He said he hoped the film would make it as far as the Sundance Film Festival, but it was rejected.

“I wanted to capture the experience of sex, but really in its awkwardness rather than its glamorization because that’s my experience of it,” he said. “It’s always awkward and funny. You try to find the right balance between subversiveness, transgression, and communication.”

Producer Thomas Logoreci, who is credited for other contributions to the film, said if any Hollywood executive had looked at the script, he or she would have said the number of scenes and locations would have been impossible to shoot with the budget.

“I think in some ways, Caveh traded one addiction for another, sex for cinema, and that the making of the film became another personal obsession for him,” said Logoreci. “Still, whatever the damage to everyone’s sanity may have been, a great American film was made. I really believe it will stand the test of time.”

Zahedi came up with the concept of the script soon after attending his first Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting in 1991. Zahedi’s original hope was a $2 million naturalistic filmmaking approach, which he said would make it a “typical European film.”

The film shows Zahedi standing in the antechamber – a small room behind the church, seconds before his third marriage to Amanda Field, managing editor of San Francisco based literary journal ZYZZYVA (pronounced ziz-i-va), which showcases West Coast writers and artists. Zahedi convinced a producer to pay for the wedding, in turn convincing Field to allow him to shoot the wedding as a part of the film.

Along with his story, Zahedi shares the personal struggles of his ex-wives and girlfriends who were forced to accept his honest confessions about his sexual addictions to prostitutes. The names of all characters were changed, according to Zahedi.

“Caveh’s movies have a humanness to them,” said Field. “Someone is showing you all his imperfections and this makes me feel like my imperfections are more acceptable.”

The film was submitted to several well-known film festivals, but Zahedi said nobody wanted to buy it, fearing it would make very little money. He then began self-distributing the film in the fall of 2005, when it attracted the likes of IFC Films – a leading independent film distribution company launched in 2000.

Since then, “I Am a Sex Addict” has been showing at the Balboa Theater, the Parkway Theater in Oakland, and the Elmwood Theater in Berkeley. It will continue to expand to several theaters around the United States and opens in Los Angeles April 28.

“What makes him different from other filmmakers is his relentless commitment to honesty, and his willingness to document aspects of his life without leaving out embarrassing details,” said SF State senior Michael McWay, 26, a cinema major.

Known for his other autobiographical films, “I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore” and “A Little Stiff,” the idea behind “I Am a Sex Addict” seemed like a logical thing for Zahedi to do, he said. According to previous interviews, Zahedi has been called words like “narcissistic” and “self-indulgent” for his honest style of filmmaking.

Zahedi said the only people he is reluctant to show his films to are his parents and students. He said his films make his parents uncomfortable, but his style of filmmaking has not affected his teaching.

Zahedi received his master’s degree in film from UCLA’s School of Theater, Television and Film in 1991. He currently teaches at the California College of the Arts in Oakland and Skyline College in San Bruno, and has been teaching sporadically at SF State since 1999. He has taught courses on the history of cinema, documentary film and several other weekend classes, and will be teaching a weekend course in the summer on Martin Scorsese. Currently he is working on writing his next film, “How to Overthrow the United States Government.”

“I think my attempt to make autobiographical films is really an attempt to say, ‘Look, here is a more accurate model of what it is to be a human being,’” said Zahedi. “You look like this, not like Tom Cruise, here are the things you do, here are the mistakes you make, here are the issues that you struggle with, and I think that the people who like my films really appreciate them because it validates their own lives.”