Ms Naughty Porn for Women Blog

I’ve long been a fan of the films of Petra Joy. Now she’s launched The Joy Award, a short film competition that aims to encourage new female filmmakers to create erotic movies.

This award is for first time female film-makers who would like to create erotic films that dare to question porn clichés and show sex in innovative and creative ways…

The theme of the short film competition is: “What is erotic to you?”. The maximum duration of the films is five minutes. The genre is open – from animation to documentary or erotic vignettes – we welcome all films that show sex and eroticism in an innovative, creative and artistic way.

The winners receive cash prizes, a screening at the Berlin Porn Film Festival and a chance to be on her next DVD.

Petra has written about the award on her website.

From years of battling the odds, I understand how hard it is to raise finance for a film and get your first work published and distributed, especially if your film questions clichés and breaks the mould, so I really hope that through my mentoring and the sponsorship from pjur we will discover some new female talent and make more female fantasies seen and heard.

It’s great to see Petra encouraging new talent like this and I’m now considering whether I should enter. I must admit, I’ve been reconsidering my movie making career following the arrest of the owner of Abby Winters last month so I’m not sure where to go with my filmmaking (except, perhaps, overseas). Still, I’ve already got a couple of ideas about what I’d like to do.

The deadline is 15th September so I (and you) need to get cracking!

Yes, yes, I know I already wrote that about the Rated X festival in Amsterdam. But this is true too – I really, really wish I could be in New York to enjoy the Cinekink erotic film festival. For a start, Jennifer Lyon Bell’s amazing film Matinee is showing on Friday night, as well as a collection of female-friendly shorts collected under the banner of “Wanton Female Desire.”

And of course, there’s plenty of other thought provoking and arousing films on display, plus plenty of clever conversation to be had afterwards. Do you know how fabulous that sounds? Especially when you live in a small town in a country where the police tend to turn up at film festivals if there’s sex involved?

Maybe I’ll make it next year, possibly also subbing a film if I can.

If you’re in New York, please go along so I can enjoy it vicariously through you.

Tomorrow marks the start of another wonderful erotic film festival, this time in the Netherlands. The Rated-X Alternative Erotica Film Festival features a fascinating variety of unusual, artistic and very sexy films offering a very different view of sexuality and porn. It’s almost the exact opposite of what was recently on show at the AVN awards.

At the Berlin Porn Film Festival I was very lucky to meet one of the festival’s organisers, Jennifer Lyon Bell and I’ve been meaning to post something more substantial about her work. She runs Blue Artichoke Films and her movie Matinee is being screened at the festival. Jen creates intelligent, female-friendly erotic films and she’s also a lot of fun.

There’s also a number of familiar names being screened at the festival: Tony Comstock and Maria Beatty each have a major showcase of their films. Shine Louise Houston, Audacia Ray, Emile Jouvet and Erika Lust also have films at the festival.

Among the panel discussions is one called “Positive pornofication: Women strike back” – a look at whether positive depictions of sex in porn can change the way we approach sexuality in general. Panelists include Anna Span, Sue du Plessis from Mail and Female and the lovely Wendy Delorme, who I saw perform in Berlin (and developed quite a big girly crush on).

There’s also a bunch of thumping afterparties which I’m sure will be fantastic and I know those fun Dutch friends I met in Berlin will be there with bells on.

So I wish I was there, dammit. Once again, living in Australia leaves me out of the loop a bit. Maybe next year. And if you’re from the UK or Europe you might want to consider heading to Amsterdam for a few days this weekend and checking out the real deal when it comes to the future of porn and erotica.

It’s taken far too long but I’ve finally posted my video and report of my adventures at the Berlin Porn Film Festival. I was held up waiting for permission and excerpts from some of the films and unfortunately most of those I contacted didn’t reply. It’s a shame because I saw so much talent on display at the festival and I was eager to give those people a bit of publicity.

In any case I hope you like the vid. It’s only very amateur and the sound quality is crap but we made do with what was available. I’ll be editing together a much longer version and also writing a more in-depth article to feature at For The Girls.

Maybe I’m just more aware of porn festivals since I went to Berlin, but it seems they’re popping up everywhere.

This weekend sees the second Pornotopia Feminist Porn Film Festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Petra’s Feeling It and Erika’s Five Hot Stories For Her are featured, as is Audacia’s funny new short Dacia’s Love Machine.

The weekend we got to Paris saw the first ever Paris Porn Film Festival… which I unfortunately missed. The Guardian wrote a somewhat cynical article about the festival and the growth of feminism and female influence in porn.

There are similar porn festivals planned for other cities in Europe throughout next year.

In January 2009 my new friend Jennifer Lyon Bell is presenting the Rated X Film Festival in Amsterdam, dedicated to alternative, artistic and radical erotica. The call for submissions is still open; I wonder if I can slap something together in time?

Meanwhile, the Sexy International Film Festival is touring around the world after a successful showing in Melbourne. They marketed themselves as being “not porn” but it’s still a step forward for Australia to have something like this.

I want to go to these things! And I want to make movies for them too. Just gotta get a bit more organised…

Meanwhile, my video mini-doco of the Berlin festival has been delayed while I wait for permission to use a couple of clips. Be patient, I’ll have it up on the blog next week, with a full version available at FTG.

Petra Joy reports on her blog that her latest film Feeling It is up for two major awards at this year’s International Erotic Film Festival in Madrid, Spain (FICEB). The first nomination is for Best Film and the second is for Best Director. She’s up against heavyweights from the adult industry including films from Vivid and Evil Angel. It’s quite an achievement for an indie director and it’s also a big feather in the cap for women’s porn – for such a film to be in the running at a major award night is pretty damned impressive.

The awards are announced this Wednesday.

So congratulations to Petra – I hope she wins!

PS – What a cool pic to represent the film festival (above)

The London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, hosted by the BFI, featured a special selection of female-focused and produced erotica. Under the banner “Female Fantasies”, the festival screened a number of erotic shorts by female filmmakers, including Petra Joy. From festival website:

A new wave of feminist pornographers explore authentic onscreen sexuality with humour, edge, and style. Celebrating bisexual and lesbian women’s fantasies, they are not afraid to cross genre or gender to turn themselves on.

Petra discusses going to the dinner and screenings on her blog here.

The recent Cinekink erotic film festival in New York featured a panel discussion called “Women Behind The Lens” featuring Candida Royalle, Audacia Ray and Julie Simone.

There’s a video of the whole discussion here. I haven’t watched it yet because I just don’t have the time today but it’s there if you’re interested.

Audacia has blogged about her participation here. Both she and Cory Silverberg question the validity of the director’s gender being an issue behind whether a porn film is worthwhile – as Cory says “I don’t buy that there’s anything fundamentally different about ‘women’ making adult moves.”

I could spend time writing up a detailed contrary opinion to this… but I’ve got other things to do (including several new exciting websites to make and a film script to write). You know where I stand on this, I’ve written it before. Suffice to say that no, having a woman behind the camera on a porn film does not necessarily mean it will be female friendly. But I do think that a woman’s experience can color how she creates her art, and that is worth exploring.

By the way, Petra Joy was meant to be at Cinekink but she was ill and couldn’t attend. I’m not sure if she was supposed to be on the panel, but Shine Louise Houston was and she also couldn’t make it. A pity.

Erika Lust’s film Five Hot Stories For Her was awarded best film for women at the Venus Eline Awards in Berlin last week. The other nominees were Petra Joy’s Female Fantasies and Renee Pornero’s film Viennese.

On her blog Petra said that this was the first time an adult awards ceremony has acknowledged porn films made for women (if we don’t count the Good For Her Feminist Film Awards). So it’s nice to see the industry paying a bit more attention to those filmmakers trying to cater to us girlies.

Full list of nominees here.

There was also a seminar on Saturday at the Berlin Porn Festival called Good Porn for Good Girls attended by Erika, Petra and Audacia Ray, among others. Audacia’s diary of her visit to Berlin is at The Peeq although at the time of writing she hasn’t updated it much. There’ll probably be more on her blog.

Erika Lust’s blog post on the win has her pictured with Sandra Torres from German company Thagson, which has decided to produce a line of adult films for women. More information here (plus stills from Erika’s film). Translation.

There’s a trailer for Viennese here. It’s in German but that’s not too important given all the sex.