In 1970, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to host a public screening of hardcore sex. Presented by PinkLabel.TV, the San Francisco PornFilmFestival honors the city’s sexy legacy with screenings of adult films and filmmaker Q&As. From November 11 thru November 28, this year’s festival will feature a hybrid of in-person events a the Brava Center for the Arts (masks and proof of vaccination will be required) and virtual events that can be enjoyed from anywhere in the world.
The San Francisco PornFilmFestival offers one of the most expansive and inclusive collections of adult content. Some topics that will be covered at this year’s festival include Black sex magic, elder sexuality, survivor reclamation, cruising and more. Here are five performers and filmmakers you can catch at the fest later this month.
House of Huitlacooch
What is the House of Huitlacooch?
House of Huitlacooch is a QTPOC kink collective based in Chicago’s southwest side that celebrates alternative representations of sex and pleasure in our community. We create collective spaces for the exploration of queer and trans people of color pleasure and eroticism and use pornography as a means for documenting and archiving our sexual manifestations. To find out more visit our Instagram @houseofhuitlacooch or access our studio via PinkLabel.tv
Which film(s) will you be appearing in at this year’s SF PornFilmFestival?
This year we are showing our film Snack Time, episode 2 of our ongoing All You Can Eat series.
What do you like about making porn?
As a collective, we enjoy making porn as a means of sharing the diversity of ways that queer and trans BIPOC sexual expressions look. It’s about sexual representation, by us, for us.
What kind of experience do you hope the audience will have when they view your work?
We hope that by viewing our film, people will experience the joy that we feel when we are witnessed in our entirety; that folks are able to sense the pleasure that we derive from the simple joys of eating, of sharing stories, of sensory fulfillment in our realities as working class people, as people of color and as trans and queer individuals.
BEYONDEEP
Tell me about the range of work you create as BeyonDeep.
We’re two artists who create multimedia using film, digital/fine art, writing and music. As BEYONDEEP Productions, we’ve worked as an indie duo directing, filming, editing and performing in all of our film projects to date. We center our Black, queer and trans lens to heal, empower and create space for the erotic and a reflection of ourselves in culture.
Which film(s) will you be appearing in at this year’s SF PornFilmFestival?
This year, SF PornFilmFestival is screening a special cut of our film Black Sex Magic, a BDSM ritual that mixes rough impact with sensual romance, guided by music, thunder and flames.
What do you like about making porn?
As a kinky, polyam couple, we like being able to exhibit our fantasies and our love through our art. We’re motivated by all the positive feedback we’ve received to keep creating our porn and impacting people. We enjoy making space for pleasure and feel it is vital to do so. For us, making porn is liberating because we are in full control of our bodies, our sexuality and how we want to represent ourselves. In an industry that historically has marginalized and stereotyped people like us, making our own porn is a reclamation.
What kind of experience do you hope the audience will have when they view your work?
We hope the audience will feel the magic and love we put into our work, feel in touch with their own sacred sexuality and be turned on!
Lina Bembe
Your TED Talk is incredible! Tell me about your work outside of porn.
Thanks! Outside of filming or performing porn… I write and speak about porn! From different perspectives, such as the educational one. I’m part of Sex School Hub, an explicit sex ed platform that brings together the knowledge of sex workers, certified educators and porn creators to create content that’s unbiased, informative and relatable. Also, on a regular basis I get invited to curate screenings, write or speak about porn, sex education (in relation to pornography), feminism and culture.
Which film(s) will you be appearing in at this year’s SF PornFilmFestival?
I’ll be appearing in two films: Ruptured by Max Disgrace and Better than Clean by Insatiable Films. Both films are part of the FORE/PLAY program.
Ruptured is a fascinating take on the horror genre. It subverts the typical horror tropes that present feminized bodies as helpless victims. I truly enjoy working with Max Disgrace, and my co-star Ze Royale couldn’t be more fun, weird and hot. I love performing with them!
Better than Clean is an absolutely surreal story that begins when all my friends cancel on my dinner party plans. Bored and disappointed, I call a mysterious “cleaning” service that delivers an out-of-this-world experience. Expect lots of food, a bit of messiness and artist Cochon de Cauchemar’s unique artistic direction and aesthetics.
What do you like about making porn?
Porn is an incredibly complex industry. Navigating it can be very difficult and uncertain. However, I believe in what I do. On a personal level, most of the time I like myself when I’m in front of a camera, the kind of energy that comes out of it, the emotions I’m able to express. Performing is really my thing. On a broader level, I absolutely love the fact that porn is a highly creative medium on its own to express ideas and views, not only about sex and sexuality, but also about politics, bodies, identities, art, etc. The potential of porn for saying things in ways no other medium is able to will always fascinate me.
What kind of experience do you hope the audience will have when they view your work?
I hope to contribute towards expanding people’s sexual imagery. I also hope to send the message that porn can be many things and can provoke a whole range of emotions and ideas. I’m not as interested in being liked or seen as hot as I am in sparking people’s curiosity and stimulating a good deal of imagination. When you get to that point, you get to understand how powerful sex, sexuality and non-normative ways of existing in this world as sexual creatures are. Expect tons of the latter at this incredible festival.
Lotus Lain
It sounds like you work in many different parts of the adult industry. Tell me about your work with the Free Speech Coalition.
We work to protect the rights and freedoms of the adult industry. I specifically work to enhance the information performers receive about how to thrive and survive in our industry.
Which film(s) will you be appearing in at this year’s SF PornFilmFestival?
I’m in Chemistry Eases The Pain by Pink & White Productions.
What do you like about making porn?
I love the physical conversation aspect of getting to know someone I wouldn’t normally get to know in such an intimate way.
What kind of experience do you hope the audience will have when they view your work?
I hope that viewers are able to see something of themselves in anything I do. Hopefully, it is relatable.
Mahx Capacity
Tell me about AORTA films — how long have y’all been around and what kind of work do you create?
AORTA films makes “lusty, opulent, glorious fuckery.” We’re obsessed with creating hot, kinky content that celebrates queer identity and explodes with destabilizing pleasure. We were founded in 2015 and produce a new short film every month, as well as longer-term feature projects, a bi-annual festival called BEDDED and more! Hailing from queer BDSM community and experimental performance contexts, our studio works collaboratively, and we prioritize safe and enthusiastically consensual working processes. You can find us at www.AORTAfilms.com, and full access is just $9/month!
Which film(s) will you be appearing in at this year’s SF PornFilmFestival?
We’ll be showing two films as part of the San Francisco PornFilmFestival: Hole Theory and Hard at Work. Hole Theory stars the mind-blowingly hot and talented duo Ashley Paige and Corey More and is animated by Oona Taper with an original score by Paleo Pony aka Jonah Rosenberg. It’s AORTA’s first foray into working with animation, and it’s a trippy, maximal manifesto about holes as the gender of the universe. And then Hard at Work features megababes (and IRL couple) Ze Royale and Indigo and is a really hot, sweet, intimate “working from home” encounter with a really awesome score by Frankie Winter. Both films were shot over the pandemic and highlight ways that we’ve been working to adjust to what’s possible given safety concerns.
What do you like about making porn?
I love so many parts of it. I love working with performers to create and hold a space where they can simultaneously be vulnerable and powerful — I’m so fed by who we get to be in that space and how it changes who we are when we go back to the “real world.” I love the feeling that emerges when a shoot is going right, when you’re catching something that feels almost holy because the performers are being so present with each other and are so deep into what’s happening, and it’s so unimaginably hot, and no one on set breathes for fear of disrupting it. It cracks me open. It makes me so proud and grateful to be queer and a dyke and a pervert. I love celebrating queerness and feeling so hot for so many different types of sex and play and bodies and identities and making films that make people feel seen and celebrated and lusted after. I love this community of porn folks that makes such incredibly smart, heartful, sexy, disruptive work. I love that porn can be a trojan horse to get ideas and politics and aesthetics and the capacity for change through the defenses — not only into people’s minds, but into their bodies, in a very deep and lasting way.
What kind of experience do you hope the audience will have when they view your work?
I hope they make people feel something! I feel like the overwhelm of the last year made me really shut down and put blinders on joy. I had to just figure out how to function at my bare minimum just to get through it all. That was useful, but not joyful, and not a way to live going forward, I think. When I shoot or get to watch porn, I feel cracked open by seeing queer joy and pleasure — I think that’s even more important now as we reemerge and try to figure out how to not only keep surviving, but maybe even get to a next level of finding joy again. I don’t think we can survive without joy and pleasure. Not to be overly optimistic — the world is ending — but I think there’s utility and survival there. I hope people feel cracked open in some way that feels useful — be it an experience of joy or lust or curiosity or hunger or body impulse. There’s no wrong way to watch any of our work — feel what you feel!
Remember when feminism challenged the dehumanizing sexual objectification of women, with lesbians spearheading that movement? I don’t; because liberal politics have infiltrated the gay and lesbian community to an embarrassing degree. You can’t fight the porn industry with “ethical” porn because the demand for dehumanizing and non-consensual sex will always outweigh whatever rose colored shades you want to apply to the topic. Male sexual entitlement to voyeurism is now not only exclusively male; it’s now being marketed to females as “liberating” and “empowering.” Women deserve better. Gay people deserve better.