STATEMENT 2022

Five years of hard work, numerous amazing films, workshops and discussions, countless inspiring people, filmmakers, performers, team members and volunteers have shaped the Porn Film Festival Vienna since its beginnings! And we are still evolving, greeting new exciting people into our team, like the new program director Adrineh Simonian, opening up for new stimulating ideas, growing, learning and sharing this experience with our audience. Our fifth anniversary should be celebrated, and we would like to invite you all to join us on our journey through this year's colorful and powerful program! So, instead of looking back over the last five years, let's look into the future and talk about what to expect in the upcoming days!

Pornography is not only part of our culture, but also reflects it in a very specific way. It discusses fundamental issues that are supposedly private, but are in fact public - and thus political! Sexuality, body politics and gender identities deserve to be discussed without prejudice, openly and controversially. The Porn Film Festival Vienna wants to offer a sex-positive, body-positive and non-heteronormative space to do so! We want to connect, unite and educate, via films, bodies and sexualities, we want to create a common floor for discussion and creation, for creativity and collectivity!

Especially in times of isolation and social distancing, it is crucial to talk about our sexual needs and about intimacy, and to reflect on our own attitudes towards sexuality. The pandemic, which is also a present topic in the festival’s films, has not only changed relationships in everyday life, but also our sexual practices, desires, and routines. Moreover, every day, reports in the news inform us of a backlash in gender equality and in emancipatory achievements that have been fought for over many years. Patriarchal structures are being consolidated all over again, women* restricted to the private sphere. And sexual minorities in all their diversity are being marginalized, once again kept out of mainstream media.

This is exactly where porn shows its subversive potential and our festival its activist side! With our program, we do not only want to oppose the commercialized mainstream and porn's image as a “smutty cesspool”. We also want to bring marginalized groups to the center, create a platform for new forms of representation and liberate sexual desires and gender identities on screen! We want to shed light on feminist and queer filmmakers, body-positive aesthetics and perspectives, non-heteronormative productions, and diverse, colorful and fabulous sexualities in porn and elsewhere! So, let’s push those limits that are imposed on us, cross borders, build bridges, stay rebel and claim the space!

Yavuz Kurtulmus (Founder & Festival Director) / Jasmin Hagendorfer (Co-Founder & Creative Director) / Adrineh Simonian (Program Director)

(creative wirting by Christina)