VISITING A Porn Film Festival
The Porn Film Festival Vienna has just ended, and the Porn Film Festival Brussels is just around the corner – a good opportunity to reflect on what porn film festivals actually are and how they can shape our view of porn. Our guest author Nick Grasso was at the infamous Porn Film Festival Berlin and lets us see through his eyes how festivals can broaden our horizons, create sex-positive and queer-inclusive spaces and transcend the boundaries of the genre.
It is a cold October morning in 2024. I enter the Moviemento cinema, in the heart of Kreuzberg, Berlin. I get my ticket and, together with 60 other people of all demographics, enter Theater #3. The excitement is palpable in the air: everyone’s dresses cover all the colors of the rainbow, some are munching tacos, some are with friends, others by themselves. The lights go down, and the screening starts. It is all pretty regular for a trip to the cinema, right? However, this is not any film screening: it is the Art & Experimental Porn selection at the Porn Film Festival Berlin 19.
We are currently living in one of the most sexless eras in mainstream cinema, and the public’s perception of pornography also plays a part in that. Many’s experiences with this genre (for it is indeed a genre, with its own tropes, visual language, and expectations) are based on prejudice or harmful preconceived notions. There are, however, some realities, especially in the more independent sphere of porn, that fight to empower sex workers and normalize all facets of gender and sexuality by breaking down social stigmas through the power of cinema.
This is where a porn film festival comes into place. Having talked to multiple close friends about the event, the general perception is that the festival is that of sex cinema, in which audience members access screenings incognito, looking to get aroused in public. This could not be further from the truth: attending a porn film festival is as normal as attending any other film screening, the only difference is that trailers for porn companies (sponsors of the festival) play instead of your regular playlist.
The Porn Film Festival Berlin is both an enchanting and inspiring experience. Attending the first-ever screening is nerve-wracking: not only are you unaware of what you are about to watch, but to share the viewing of porn with a crowd still feels deeply taboo. It is in moments like this that it becomes clear just how uncomfortable conversations around sex are, let alone actually watching it unfold on a large screen, with all of the noises amplified through the theater’s surround system. And yet, after the first screening and some nervous chuckle, it all starts to feel more… normal. Oftentimes, the directors and performers of these films are present at the screenings for a Q&A, a reminder that what you see on screen is the work of real people. They may be professional filmmakers, amateurs, escorts, veterans, or newcomers to the industry, but they are all artists in their own right, and it is so touching to see them beam as they see their work, their bodies projected on the silver screen, cherishing the audience’s applause and questions with true delight.
That’s how it felt for me too:This was how I felt my first time around: porn was never mentioned during my upbringing (let alone in the shallow SexEd classes in high school) and I carried decades of Catholic stigma on my shoulders when entering my first screening. All it took was for the screening to start and the film to play out to realize that there was no reason to worry: I was surrounded by like-minded individuals, some with similar stories as mine, who were able to enjoy a porn film as, well, a real film. A funny short would elicit laughter while an overlong sex scene would prompt yawns, just as it happens at any regular mainstream screening. We are talking about cinema after all, and while the content is more unusual and underrepresented on the silver screen and on television, these films use the same cinematic language as all the classics that made me fall in love with the art form to begin with. It can be the iconic mirror shot from Citizen Kane or an artfully crafted crotch shot, it is cinema nonetheless.
Any festival is only as good as its selection, and the programmers of PFFB do a tremendous job every year in highlighting a vast variety of projects by filmmakers and artists from all over the world. While it is fair to assume that a good chunk of the schedule features scenes of explicit sex (usually present in the Hetero, Gay, Lesbian, Queer, and XXXX sections), there are also plenty of non-explicit, avant-garde, and alternative films that push the boundary of what porn is.
What is pornography anyway?
After all, what even is porn? This question remains an enduring one, and attending a festival such as this is a great opportunity to widen the term. At one moment, you could be watching Silver V (dir. Lina Bembe), a short about lesbian vampires that challenges the portrayal of blood in porn by making it purple, or The third world after the sun (dir. Analú Laferal & Tiagx Vélez), a cross between the magical slow cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and the on-location realism of Werner Herzog with a touch of transsexuality and latex fetish. In one screening you can experience the exuberant space opera that is The Lesbian Alien Darkroom Fisting Operetta on Venus (dir. Lasse Långström), and then more intimate documentaries like Remote Sex Work (dir. Carmina/Prune) about cam models in France, or the story of a BIPOC non-binary trans man who reflects on their trauma and experiences as sex worker in I Really Want To Get Fucked (dir. Robin Astera). There are also many more “conventional”, mainstream films that can be seen at the festival: in the 2024 edition of the festival, there was the documentary Teaches of Peaches (dir. Philipp Fussenegger, Judy Landkammer) on the famed singer, as well as the restored versions of the Gregg Araki Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, while in 2023 they screened the Oscar-shortlisted documentary Kokomo City (dir. D. Smith) on the reality of black trans sex workers in the States.
This aforementioned selection of films might seem to muddle the concept of “porn”, but in my opinion it only expands it and shows how limitless it is. A serious documentary on the hardships of being a sex worker and single mother can coexist alongside a queer couple enjoying sex in the woods. The term “porn” has been weaponized by governments worldwide in a pursuit to control and stifle freedom of sexuality and expression, with some countries having any portrayal of explicit intimacy be illegal and worthy of jail time. In a place like the Porn Film Festival Berlin, the word itself becomes a comforting one, a reminder that there are safe havens for sex workers and industry professionals, for trans performers and openly sexual women, and anyone else who is considered society’s reject.
This is the power of having such diverse representation in the selection: closeted audience members can be inspired by the sexual liberation of Bruce LaBruce’s The Visitor (a remake of Pasolini’s Teorema) to embrace their true identity, or queer women can live vicariously through the steamy bar fantasy of Jasko Fide’s Fantastic Squirt. Porn does not have to solely be this visual stimuli for self-pleasure: it can be art, it can be comedy, it can be inspiring, it can be truth. It is as broad a cinematic genre as they come, one that has to be experienced fully and personally to be understood.
A utopia in hateful times
While it may look like this on the outside, we are still living in deeply hateful times, and even in so-called “developed” countries there are rampant racism, misogyny, and trans/homophobia. A porn film festival is not only the opportunity to watch underrepresented people tell their own stories on film, but it is also a chance to hear them talk in person. Whether at the Adult Industry Only event or at the public panels and workshops, to speak with the artists behind the selected films is the best way to better understand how the industry works: how some performers are shamed on a daily basis by their neighbors, how credit card companies put more and more limits on what can be sold online, but also on how life-long friendships are made during the toughest times, and how there is hope of growing together to ensure financial stability and creative freedom. During the festival, multiple performers unite to shoot new videos or plan upcoming films, sharing their experiences over the previous months and their hopes for the future. You learn how some couples reignited their passion by shooting porn, how certain women have reinvented themselves through camming after escaping abusive relationships, and how working on multiple shoots has helped certain performers expand their gender identity and fully transition.
It may be a utopia, but it really would do wonders to many to attend a porn film festival. Whether it is in Berlin, Warsaw, Rome, San Francisco, Seattle, or Vienna, it is likely that there is one not too far away from you. It could be a unique opportunity to fight some of your inner preconceptions surrounding the adult industry and sex work, an opportunity to get out of your comfort zone and try something new in as safe a place as possible, and to discover new styles of cinema that are bound to surprise you. From my own experience, it has been truly enlightening, widening my knowledge of certain socio-political issues and also witnessing certain cinematic surprises that rival the most prestigious art films out there.
Nick Grasso is a cinephile and filmmaker. When he’s not watching, editing or reviewing movies, he’s shooting with and for well-known faces of indie porn from Jasko Fide to Bishop Black.
You can see more of him here: https://www.nicolograssofilmmaker.com/.
Copyright images: Porn Film Festival Berlin / Header – Virginia D, in text – Robert Wilde
