Today, I am back from Lausanne, Switzerland, where I attended the Fête du Slip, the first sex-positive porn festival. It was a very enriching event since I got to discover and meet a lot of artists, talk about sex and porn issues and watch plenty of cool films.

I also got to think about a lot of issues. During a Q&A after the screening of my film, NAKED – which ran in the official competition – I talked about mainstream porn and its nasty habits. However, that same night at the festival party, I got to talk with Gonzo from the French website about porn culture, Le Tag Parfait. He told me he disagreed with what I had said about mainstream porn and that not all of it was bad.

So, I wondered, since words are oh so important in this sexual debate, what do we call this porn that leaves a bad taste in our mouths? This porn who doesn’t respect the workers nor the audience by making huge quantities of degrading sex that only comforts us in ours fears and complexes?

At the closing ceremony last Sunday, the organizer of the festival began his speech by thanking everybody who was there: ‘Ladies, gentlemen, and everybody in between’. Avoiding generalizations and acknowledging all the shades of sexuality is as crucial as understanding the differences and similarities in porn.

The Codes

Even movies with mainstream codes, such as the order of positions or shooting actors who are confined within the current standards of beauty, can be very good and pleasurable.

I was asked, at the Q&A: ‘Why are there a lot of close-up shots in your film, since they’re something we constantly see in mainstream porn?’.

I love close-up shots, just not for 20 minutes non-stop. I love watching the sexes on my full-screen, merging with each other. It’s the same with ejaculation. I love when guys come on my tits, but I don’t want to know that it’s how the film is going to end. It’s not the acts that we should condemn, but the aim and the way the films are made.

So, what do we call that porn?

We can’t even call that porn ‘tube porn’ because there is a lot of good and bad content on tube sites. I personally upload scenes from my films on there, so it’s not a rule that all that’s on there is mediocre.

I would call it ‘bad’ porn. I know it’s a subjective way to call it but I think we have to be honest. We all think of the same thing when we say ‘bad’ porn. A porn that makes us feel inadequate and disgusting by watching poor productions and actors who wish they had made better decisions in their life.

Ethical porn is not always good. You may like it or not, but it’s never bad in the sense that it never betrays the people who participate to it and watch it and at least, it always respects people’s sexuality and personality.

Erika Lust’s Do You Find My Feet Suckable? from her project XConfessions was also nominated at the Fête Du Slip. Watch the whole scene here.

XConfessions vol. 2: Sneak Peaks from Erika Lust on Vimeo.

Pleasure and Performance

I talk a lot about good porn here, it’s because for me good porn is porn that features pleasure, but porn can also be a performance, not in the sense that it’s like a marathon, but more like it can be an act. We tend to think that authenticity is the way to go and that’s what I like to do personally, but it doesn’t have to be REAL, as long as the performers are having fun, are happy, respected and that the end result is a sex-positive product.

Sex-positivity

This is a word that I heard a lot this week end. What is it really? When applied to porn, it’s a film that leaves a good taste in your mouth, that makes you hot even after, just thinking about it. It’s porn that makes you feel good about yourself and your body. That is the essence of alternative porn.

Impulse Response by Four Chambers was part of the competition. More here.

impulse response // tease from Four Chambers on Vimeo.

I will write again soon, when I have gathered all the photos, to talk about the winners of the competition and all the other cool things that happened during the week end.