It’s taken a couple of weeks but I’ve finally finished my mini documentary about the 10th annual Berlin Porn Film Festival which was held from the 21st to the 25th October 2015. The video features filmmaker/performer interviews, film snippets and a special section on the 40th anniversary screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
The “director’s point” on the final night with Jennifer Lyon Bell, Shine Louise Houston, Ingrid Ryberg and Jiz Lee
The Writeup
We had such a great time at last year’s Berlin Porn Film Festival that we swore we’d come back and do it again for the 10th anniversary edition. Thus it was that Luke and I hauled ourselves across the planet to once again bathe in the sweet company of all the kinky queer fun porn people of Berlin. This year’s expedition proved to be personally challenging but also hugely rewarding.
The challenging part was that the day we arrived in Berlin we desperately wished we were back in our home town, supporting some of our closest friends. The day we left Australia, our young mother-of-five friend had been rushed to hospital with an aneurysm on her small bowel. After nearly bleeding to death and an initial failed surgery, she ended up in the intensive care unit fighting for her life. As October progressed, things became gradually worse, to the point that she wasn’t expected to survive. We spent the Sunday and Monday prior to the festival expecting the worst news. This meant that it was very hard to concentrate on the two shoots we had scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.
And then it all turned around. Thanks to some experimental antibiotics administered by a doctor, she survived and started to improve. By Friday she was stable, awake and everything was beautiful. So while the start of the festival was an emotional time for us, we found ourselves truly appreciating our lives and all of our porn friends in the wake of this experience.
I may be oversharing this personal story but it was such a huge component of our visit to Berlin. We started out feeling rather desolate and lonely and very homesick. We left wishing we could have stayed and hung out with our friends for longer, especially because we were seeing things with more gratitude.
Drinks with Josie and Morgana
In any case, the festival itself was amazing, as usual. If you haven’t read or seen my previous documentaries and posts, the Berlin Porn Film Festival is the premiere event for people who make films about sex. It was originally set up in 2006 to celebrate alternative depictions of sexuality and it happily embraced the word “porn”, even though it made sponsorship harder to get. They did this because they want to show that pornography is a legitimate aspect of filmmaking, one worthy of a festival.
While the festival happily screens films showing straight-up fucking, it’s so much more than a skin fest. It showcases a huge variety of perspectives, sexualities and experiences that mainstream porn never touches. It dares to exhibit movies that are transgressive and sometimes extremely confronting as part of its mission to explore the full rainbow of sex. Berlin also seeks to elevate the perspective of female filmmakers and others who may be a minority in porn – people of colour, queer and trans people, fetishists and those with a disability.
This year Sex and Disability was a theme for the festival, with a focus on films challenging the way people with a disability are often considered to be sexless. Margarita With A Straw tells of an Indian woman with cerebral palsy who starts to explore her bisexuality. Yes, We Fuck is an explicit documentary giving voice to the sexual experiences of the disabled. Dora Oder die Sexuellen Neurosen Unserer Eltern (Dora or The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents) is about the sexual awakening of a mentally disabled woman. The festival organizers were aware that the Moviemento cinema is not wheelchair friendly and thus set up a free screening of films at an accessible venue. They say next year they will do more.
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We actually came to Berlin a week earlier so I could attend the PorYes European Feminist Porn Awards, which I’ll write about later. By the time we got to the festival, I’d already had some wonderful nights out with Jiz Lee, Jennifer Lyon Bell, Buck Angel and performer Sadie Lune. We’d also shot two scenes – a threesome starring Mickey Mod, Livia Vye and Nichole, and a kinky straight scene starring Pandora Blake and her friend Parker. These scenes went really well, even if we weren’t 100% on our game thanks to our emotional distraction. (Shooting is one of the other reasons we love to visit Berlin. We also shot our first trans scene with Sadie and her ex-partner KAy Garnellan on the Friday morning, plus a solo with Bishop Black on Monday.)
Discussing my film at the Femancy session with moderator Maggie Tabert, Morgana, Josie and Bishop Black
This year I had two short films selected for the festival: Hand Jobs and Perversion For (Feminist Fun And) Profit. The latter was programmed in the “Political Porn” session while the former was in the “Femancy” session (Jochen, one of the organisers, explained that they created the word as a mashup of “feminism” and “emancipation” – although everyone I spoke to at the time was generally confused as to what it meant). Both films were received well. As a filmmaker in attendance I got up to speak about censorship and politics in Australia for Perversion, as well as the origins of the 1960s film it is based on (I found it at InternetArchive.org). With Hand Jobs I spoke about the desire to make a straight film that didn’t focus on penetration.
Bright Desire was a small sponsor of the festival as well this year, so the program contained a half page ad for the site. It was nice to be able to help out in a small way.
Overall I think the festival was a huge success. Of the 400 films submitted they showed 135. They sold over 7500 tickets over five days, a record. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the place so crowded and every single session was sold out. People were sitting in the aisles in the tiny cinemas, on stools and wooden benches along the side of the walls.
The Films
My main regret this year was that I just didn’t get to see enough films! As a festival guest I’m entitled to free tickets but you have to book them the day before. Too often, the sessions were sold out within a few hours of the box office opening so I missed the films I wanted to see. I managed to make it to the Berlin Porn, Fun Porn and Shorts Competition sessions, along with the two sessions that screened my films. I also got to the What The Projectionist Saw 10th Anniversary Retrospective. Beyond that, I didn’t see much at all. I’ll admit this was partly my fault; I was often off socialising during sessions and I didn’t plan what to see ahead of time so I missed getting early tickets. There was also work: I shot a third scene on the Friday and a couple of business meetings as well.
So what’s featured in the doco above and what I can write about is limited to my own experience.
The first film I got to see was The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight on Wednesday. As you hear in the above doco, the festival decided to screen it to celebrate the film’s 40th anniversary. In her introduction, festival curator Manuela Kay said that the Moviemento was the oldest cinema in Berlin and that for several years in the 1970s it was the home of Rocky Horror. The film became a cult hit worldwide and a drawcard for anyone whose sexuality meant they were isolated from mainstream society. For Manuela, the movie was the scene of her first lesbian date and the blossoming of her first love. So naturally we totally cheered that story.
Typically, midnight screenings involve people calling out lines, re-enacting the film in front of the screen and the audience throwing rice, playing cards, toast and squirting water guns. The Berlin screening was relatively tame, with almost half the audience being “virgins” who’d never seen it before. Even so, a small number of hardcore fans – myself included – did out best to shout out some good one liners, to stand up and do the Time Warp (hence the wobbly camera work) and to cheer the arrival of Dr. FranknFurter. The entire experience had me grinning like an idiot – especially because they showed the film using the original 35mm print, complete with scratches, jumps and missing footage.
The opening night film Schnick Schnack Schnuck (Rock, Paper Scissors) was a lot of fun and a great example of how female directors are changing porn. Director Maike Brochhaus has created a cheerful yet sexy story of a couple exploring outside the boundaries of their monogamous relationship. It has an engaging story and is well acted, while the sex scenes are explicit but distinctly non-porny. There’s also a great orgy scene at the end. Alas, it’s all in German, including the website and trailer. Hopefully they’ll offer a subtitled/translated version soon.
The closing night film The Duke Of Burgundy has screened at Sundance and been acclaimed all over the world. It’s a subtle, non-explicit look at a dominant/submissive relationship between two women. The Guardian reviewer said “The Duke of Burgundy is the most tender love story you’ll see in which a woman forcefully urinates in her lover’s mouth.” The film explores the subtleties of the relationship slowly and delicately; it becomes apparent as the film progresses that Cynthia, the “domme”, is actually not in charge of the situation and that her lover’s desire for punishment is all carefully planned ahead of time. The movie takes its time laying out the different perspectives involved, creating layers of emotion charged with the spice of power play. I found it a little ponderous in places but also quite fascinating. And it’s very beautiful to look at. Apparently you can now rent it on Netflix if you’re curious.
I love documentaries but the only one I caught was Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story. Though the doco was very sympathetic to Bob, who was something of a product of his time, I very much enjoyed this look at an important part of porn’s history, including the way that Penthouse pushed the borders of censorship. In 1969 the magazine was the first US publication to show pubic hair; 9 months later Playboy followed (despite Hugh Hefner’s avowals that it would never happen). This became known as the “pubic wars”.
As usual, the short films were incredibly diverse, ranging from hilarious to engrossing to arousing to kinda boring, depending on one’s perspective of course. One of my favourites was Last Call by Katybit:
In 2011 Katy screened Cum Different, a documentary about feminist porn. She’s since devoted her time to short films and now she’s excelled herself with a beautifully shot female threesome fantasy starring Sadie Lune. The film does a great job of capturing the surreal aspects of a sexual fantasy and it features some non-traditional sex including pegging. Last Call received an honorable mention in the short film competition.
This year’s winner was Houseboy by my lovely friend Pandora Blake. Inspired by her visit to last year’s festival, Pandora set out to create a more cinematic spanking film than what she regularly featured on Dreams of Spanking (her site, now closed thanks to UK censorship laws). The result is a playful exploration of BDSM dynamics: Pandora’s newly acquired houseboy (Tai Crimson) causes friction in the household when her established submissive (Eliza Grey) becomes jealous. Naturally, this tension requires Pandora to step in and discipline everyone with a lot of spanking.
Another favourite from the competition was Zolushka, a gay version of Cinderella, directed by Wes Hurley. Our hero, downtrodden by ugly drag queen sisters, wants to go to the gay bar to meet the hunky bear of his dreams. Luckily, Waxie Moon the fairy godmother appears to make his dreams come true. The hilarious end result is Prince Charming looking to find the mysterious guy who gave him the best rim job of his life.
The mini documentary about Morgana Muses was also a highlight. It’s My Birthday And I’ll Fly If I Want To won Best Documentary at Cinekink earlier in the year. At Berlin it inspired a lot of positive feedback.
Morgana moved from Australia to Berlin in July and has just been given three years residency there. She’s looking to make a lot more films for her company Permission4Pleasure. The other film she had at the festival was called Having My Cake. It involved a French hotel room, expensive patisserie items and the rather gorgeous Bishop Black in drag.
I mention this film because I decided, after seeing the trailer, that I wanted to work with Bishop as well. We ended up shooting a solo scene with him on the Monday after the festival.
As usual the Fun Porn session had some absolute gems including Sock Puppet, a cute little ditty about fisting that is a total earworm. There was also The Loophole (Fuck Me In The Ass Because I Love Jesus) by Garfunkle and Oates and How To Remain Single by John Wilson.
The session also included Technical Difficulties of Intimacy by Joel Moffett. This comedy features trans performers Buck Angel and Marianna Marroquin as a couple on the verge of breaking up. While funny, the film has a lot to say about trans people’s relationships to their own bodies and to each other and was quite moving. Buck gives a stellar acting performance, showing he has come a long way since those first amateur porno scenes over ten years ago.
The “Political Porn” shorts session had some great work, films that mixed criticism of religion or politics with sexuality. Raspberry Reich GR was critical of conservative Greek politics and Orthodox Christianity but it also took particular aim at Islamic fundamentalism, a point which upset some people. La Mascara is a Spanish film about three people whose “inner slut” is released when they put on a knitted Bolivian devil mask. It included a lot of guerilla filmmaking where the stars were nude or performed sexually suggestive acts in public. One scene included a woman pole dancing at the famous La Sagrida Familia church, something I found extra fabulous as I’d only been there as a tourist the week before. The session also included a very political film from my friend and fellow Australian Zahra Stardust. The One On The Bottom juxtaposes Australia’s often discriminatory censorship rules with explicit scenes of fisting and female ejaculation, two acts which are banned under the current regulatory system.
My favourite from that session was Don’t Pray For Us, an experimental performance piece that sets out to showcase a wide diversity of sexuality, body types and experience. The film is confronting: it starts with a performance piece where an artist staples pages from the Bible to her skin, complete with blood. We’re then treated to a variety of vignettes showing often surreal fantasy scenarios. Some had me wincing (a man walking on broken glass) and others were truly beautiful (a woman places butterflies on the body of a man with cerebral palsy). The whole piece is so well shot and executed, I wish I could show you the whole thing. Here’s the trailer:
The other big session I feel compelled to write about was the What The Projectionist Saw ten year retrospective. Perhaps unusually, this session was curated by Moviemento projectionist Marco Siedelmann, assisted by long-time Moviemento employee Frances Hill, an ex-Australian who now lives permanently in Berlin. They offered an unusual perspective: these were the movies that got their attention, even though they weren’t officially attending the festival or watching any films. I came away from the session feeling pretty shellshocked, saying “Well NOW I feel like I’ve been to Berlin!”
I was giggling uncontrollably at Pornodogs: The Adventures of Sadie which featured a daschund and a golden retriever wearing BDSM outfits, with accompanying voiceover (of COURSE sausage dogs speak with an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent). I also laughed and winced at Bike Maintenance, which involved a man fixing his bike using his penis (yes, it gets in the spokes). And then there was Sandweg 80 (“the one with the butter”) which could perhaps be best described as the Ben Hur of vomit porn. I don’t think I’ll ever unsee that. Still, it was made up for the wonderful short that is Ice Cream:
The Films I Missed
There were a couple of sessions I really needed to get to but circumstances prevented it. One was Afrodite Superstar, presented as a tribute to Candida Royalle who died at the beginning of September. The film was introduced by Jennifer Lyon Bell. The selection of Afrodite for the festival was controversial among our friends; it was the last film produced by Femme Productions but Candida only directed the sex scenes. The film’s concept and main direction was by Abiola Abrams, who used the pseudonym Venus Hottentot. A better selection may have been Eyes of Desire or its sequel.
Ovidie’s latest, Le Baiser, was also sold out so I missed it. Starring Madison Young, the film explores leaving monogamy (one of the central topics of this year’s festival) and overcoming jealousy. I really enjoyed her film Pulsion last year and was keen to see her latest work (and to have drinks with her again). Alas, she was only there a short time and I had other arrangements.
I had a ticket to the “Experimental Porn” shorts session but it was given away because the Shorts Competition session beforehand went over time. This meant I didn’t get to see the premiere of Sonata, David Bloom’s latest “Sex and Space” experimental film that follows on from Quintet, which Bright Desire featured a couple of months ago. Sonata is about sex and sound and it also features some amazing artistic lighting such as captured above by photographer Rene De Sans
I could also name-check all the features that I wanted to see for various reasons: AKA Fuck because it contains cinematic gay sex, Cheatin’ because I’m always interested in porny animation, Not Safe For Work because it explores different perspectives in porn and of course Margarita With A Straw, mentioned above and many others. Alas, I missed them all. I hope to maybe find a way to see some of them online in the coming months.
The Community
Even though I missed so many films, it was worth it for the socializing. And here’s where I’m going to do a bit of name dropping. I spent a lot of time with Jennifer Lyon Bell, Shine Louise Houston and Jiz Lee, talking filmmaking and online business. We also hung out a lot with Pandora Blake, Parker, Livia Vye, Nichole Shae and Bishop Black, partly because we shot scenes together and this naturally meant we had drinks and dinner. We had great conversations with Maria Bla from Toytool Committee and Caroline Ryan, who is studying pornography as part of her work at Dublin University. There was the Australian contingent – Zahra Stardust and Finn, Gala Vanting, Morgana and Josie, Louise from the Perv Film Festival – people who we talk to so often it’s almost weird to chat in another country. And there were so many others I only got to say brief words to before schedules took us elsewhere, but it was great to see them anyway.
We didn’t make it to any of the parties because we’re old and they don’t suit us anymore. I kind of wish there was a separate, smoke-free schmooze-lounge for those of us who aren’t there to dance or to fuck. I just want to drink wine and talk to people all the time.
The main thing is the ongoing buzz, the feeling of happy community and enthusiasm for our art and the vibe of acceptance of other people just as they are. There’s something very special about the Berlin Porn Film Festival because to us it really feels like a family. These are people who are old friends now, even if half of them live on the other side of the world. There is no judgement there; everyone is welcome to be themselves, to look however they want to look, to be as kinky or as vanilla as they want.
We have difficult conversations in easy company, we tease out our politics and discuss sex, masturbation, ejaculation and orgasm like it’s the weather. We dissect other people’s films, compare shooting techniques, collaborate and bounce ideas off each other. We make plans for the future and promise that we’ll keep in touch. Every one of us comes away inspired and refreshed, ready to go and make something new and different
And this is why I think I’ll be back last year. Even though at the start of the festival I was swearing we wouldn’t return (at least for a few years), I think we will be booking those airfares again in 2016. It’s just too wonderful to miss.