Film

Hungry eyes: the Pornfilmfestival Berlin's five-day feast

24. Okt. 2016
Pictured: 'Fuck Them All!'

Oct. 24, 2016 - Over the past decades, the anonymous accessibility of the internet has eroded the need for many public spaces where pornography could once be found. Thirty years ago, you had to brave going alone into a sex shop, risk a red face at the local video store or hope to “inherit” erotica from a friend. Nowadays, porn can be delivered directly into your home without even the “discrete, brown-paper envelope” of old. In Berlin, though – the home of hedonism – porn has long since come back out of hiding. It’s that time of year again: roll out the red carpet, the lapping tongues and the sex-positive manifestos – the porn film festival is back!

Now in its eleventh year of curating stories and thoughts around porn for the public eye, the PFF has become a beloved staple of our cinematic calendar. Always spanning local to international, feature-lengths to shorts, DIY to professional, each successive program has expanded into fresh territory. Last year, for instance, more than half of the films presented were made by women – a situation still rare outside of dedicated feminist festivals.

The trend continues with this year’s opening film The Bedroom by Melbourne's Anna Brownfield, presented by SIEGESSÄULE. Meanwhile, the festival’s guest of honor is U.S.-American Renaissance man Wakefield Poole, recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award and subject of Jim Tushinski’s documentary I Always Said Yes. Also in the documentary section, much-discussed Chemsex by UK directors William Fairman and Max Gogarty is being shown as part of the festival’s AIDS focus. Closer to home, catch some local flavor in Maria Beatty’s trans*porn Fuck Them All! or Julia Ostertag’s Dark Circus. Sky Deep (Reclaim the Beats festival founder) brings the world premiere of Enactone, which she both directed and stars in. The queer tale tells the story of a vampire reborn after a lynching, now feeding on post-orgasmic blood. Joining in with her own world premiere is Feminist Porn Award-winner Shine Louise Houston with her erotic thriller Snapshot.

These latter two films form the centerpiece of the festival’s second focus this year: racial politics in porn. Berlin-based director Jasco Viefhues has invited both directors, along with performers Valentine and Bishop Black, to a panel discussion. Viefhues is using the panel as an opportunity to address prevalent divisions between black and white in mainstream pornography, dissecting exotified and stereotypical representations of People of Color, and discussing how these can and must be subverted. 

If vampires aren’t enough to usher in Halloween, closing film The Love Witch by Anna Biller looks set to be as charming as it is hilarious and gruesome. And every night you can try some sex magik of your own at the official festival lounge, Ficken 3000. It’s not far from the dark cinema to the darkroom bar, and as for the journey between the two, as any porn connoisseur can confirm, it does a lot of good to get things out in the open.

Hans Kellett

SIEGESSÄULE presents
11th Pornfilmfestival Berlin
Oct. 26-30
Moviemento, Spektrum

Das Siegessäule Logo
Das Branchenbuch mit Haltung
Queer. Divers. Überzeugend.