Where does Art end and where does Pornography begin? The Berlin Porn Film Festival
Beyond the sleazy corners last weekend in Kreuzberg already the tenth Berlin Porn Film Festival took place at the Moviemento. Reason enough for us to ponder on the eternal question of where art ends in this genre and when pure pornography begin?
The Berlin Porn Film Festival was launched in 2006 by the filmmaker Jürgen Brüning. The claim of the festival is to put the genre in an artistic, social light. It's not about movies à la YouPorn, but more about aesthetics, provocation, freedom and fun with the body. At the festival international filmmakers show their often controversial productions. Just like this year, for example, Zahra Stardust describes in a "Do It Yourself" guide, which is regarded in Australia as illegal: fingering, fisting and squirting included.
The Porn Film Festival has evolved over the years. Did the early visitors not exactly know, what they should expect on the Porn Film Festival, nowadays visitors are mainly young, educated people who are set consistently interested and with a positive attitude towards eroticism art. It still remains the recognition that sexuality, even though it is propagated us every day in the media, is still a taboo topic. Especially the Porn Film Festival wants to provide a forum for diversity in sexuality.
In addition to cinema show, the Porn Film Festival offers a varied accompanying program. There are lectures, workshops and performances offered on the subject of pornography, which do not only deal with heterosexual pornography, but also cover gay, lesbian and transsexual pornography. Activists from the fields of prostitution, BDSM, sex and gender are provided a stage at the Porn Film Festival, such as the symposium "Postpornpolitics", on which scientists, artists and porn theorists discuss a new alternative porn, beyond the degrading of women to ever-willing agents of male lust.
Internationally the Berlin Porn Film Festival has generated successor festivals diverse spin-offs. In Brazil, France, Greece, Israel and last year in New York, people also organized a festival, which put pornography beyond sleazy corners into an artistic light. The ever-increasing number of visitors suggest that people want to have porn film festivals.
