sex & relationships
Filmmaker Erika Lust: I Want to Bring Equality to the Porn Industry I N T E RV I E W E D BY T I L LY R O B E RTS
Erika Lust is a multi-award-winning filmmaker and a prominent leader of the feminist pornography movement. Erika runs three online cinema sites: XConfessions, Lust Cinema and Else Cinema. Each film is produced ethically with high levels of respect for everyone involved in the process, with a team of creatives and actors who share her values and criticisms of mainstream pornography. By capturing the female gaze, she aims to create porn films that centre female desire in order to bring equality to the porn industry.
How are you transforming the stereotypes within porn? I started my business twenty years ago because I was tired of porn focused on athletic performance, stereotypical beauty standards and emotionless storylines. Likewise, I wanted to prove that we can represent sex in which people of any gender are treated as equal sexual collaborators. Sex performers are usually categorised on the free tube sites by their racial identity, age, body type, ability or demographic and are generally reduced to stereotypes. I want viewers to appreciate the film for the performance as opposed to the physical attributions of the performer. Similarly, I want performers to be able to exist outside the physical boundaries of their appearance, gender or skin colour. We have a big crew with all the departments needed to create a cinematic quality film, and all sex scenes in our films are shot in freestyle mode – that’s what makes them more natural and relatable. I don’t want me or the guest directors to provide performers with a list of actions they have to perform (as per the usual procedure in many productions in the industry). Whether we are working with experienced performers or newcomers, we get to know them well in advance through Zoom calls, or we meet them in person if we can. We always make sure they are 18+, have had their own sexual experiences already, are sex-positive and aligned with our values, and are 100% enthusiastic about being part of the project.
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