Perverse splendor and sex vampires: the first Amsterdam porn festival wants to challenge, frighten and change the viewer

You don’t expect to be moved by a porn film. Yet an entire Amsterdam cinema feels a lump in their throat after watching it Real Men. Every now and then you hear an empathetic sigh, a sob; when Rafael Rudolf tells what he wanted to say to his father: “I love men, very much. I want them near my mouth,” and children’s videos fade into images of a go-go dancer and videos of anal sex between two men. Perverse splendor.

But you don’t get to think about it for very long with Cheeky Sneak Peek, the ‘taster program’ of the first edition of the Porn Film Festival Amsterdam. Because without any interruption, horror porn starts again Ghost Song: sex vampires suck on a used tampon, the audience is shocked and giggles. Then the Korean spiritual gives gay soft porn Archiving Men resignation. Perhaps a little too much: one man in the back row falls asleep and only wakes up at a climax. And then there is Naked Snailsa comedy porn that shows you, through two men in slug suits, how slugs copulate.

After 84 minutes it is clear: at the Porn Film Festival you will not find the voluptuous stepmothers and pumping muscle men of mainstream porn. The selection wants to challenge you, broaden your psychosexual horizons, and scare you. And yes, it turns on too.

Art

“People asked me: ‘Do you have to jerk off in the hall?’ They do not yet understand that this should be normal. They are just bodies, and sometimes they have sex,” says organizer Coco Kokoschka – an alias she uses out of fear of Googling from potential employers.

She and Samuel Witteveen (real name) are volunteers at Filmhuis Cavia in Amsterdam. And they were one of the founders of the Porno Film Festival Amsterdam, which takes place this weekend in Filmhuis Cavia and De Uitkijk cinema. In a student-like office, full of beer crates and movie posters, they explain how the idea came about.

“A year ago we started with porn evenings in Cavia,” says Witteveen. Why? “Because porn can also be art. After a good arthouse film you feel crazy, you change. Good porn is no different.”

It was a success. Full halls. More was asked. Witteveen: “Cities such as Brussels, Vienna and Berlin have one. Isn’t it strange that Amsterdam is lagging behind?” A project subsidy from the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts and small contributions from queer association De Trut and Filmhuis Cavia made the first Amsterdam porn festival possible. From three hundred entries, a five-member jury selected more than a hundred films – a sexual palette with all shades of red.

Witteveen: “We don’t just select hot videos, but films that tell stories or show something you don’t see often.” Kokoschka adds: “The latter is especially necessary. Most porn is aimed at men. As a woman, I rarely feel represented. And this applies even more to people who are trans.”

It seems to fit the times perfectly. Sex workers today have more autonomy than ever. They sell their work directly to their audience via websites such as OnlyFans – shady porn producers have become redundant for them.

“That is correct,” says Kokoschka. “But at the same time, the Netherlands has also become more prudish. We act tolerant, but in the meantime the municipality of Amsterdam wants to ban sex workers from the center. You can have a conversation about that at the festival.”

Bock beer

At the Porn Film Festival the audience is remarkably diverse. All ages, genders, backgrounds are there. There are colored hair, trendy mats, glasses with gallery owner frames. During the performance, botanical colas and bock beers are drunk. No lame jokes, but conversations about ‘cinema’ in different languages.

Maybe it’s the diversity of the selection. The films are not divided into the usual categories of the commercial porn industry – such as gay, BDSM and MILF – but into themes: ‘chemistry’, ‘horror porn’, ‘bodies like water’. When you visit an event, you see a mix of everything. This audience, it turns out, is not there for an orgasm.

Take Thomas and Lotte (“you don’t get a last name”). Lotte: “It was time for Thomas to come up with a date. Then he came up with this.” Thomas: “I came across a flyer when I was at the cinema.” Lotte: “How idiotic, I thought. But it was great fun. To watch porn in a crowded room… that makes it a bit more abstract. You start thinking about the number of ways you can have sex, with so many different bodies. You will also mirror yourself.” Laughing: “Sometimes you think: good idea!” Thomas: “You don’t see that intimacy and chemistry in ‘normal porn’. That is often just a task: that puts me off.”

Helen (early twenties, “preferably no surname”) was a porn actress herself. “Such festivals are so good for sex workers. You quickly become isolated, especially if you do it alone on OnlyFans.” When asked why people would watch porn in a room, she reacts in amazement: “Isn’t it beautiful? Just like any other good movie. You get inspired. Your creative juices will start flowing, just like other juices for that matter.” Another porn actress, trans woman Chelsea Poe, believes community is important: “There is so much trans representation here. That’s why I make porn.”

The atmosphere is cheerful. But visitors also leave exhausted. The Electric Bodies program moves with flowing odes to love and communication between lovers. In particular Clap is a colorful, fluid, cinematographically stunning film. But after four orgies, medical fetish movie Wrong Holes Only – a kind of dental examination in latex – and suffocation sex film Asphyxia the audience has been wrung out: done clapping, laughing and exciting. During the post-film chat, an audience member says to filmmaker Chelsea Poe. “I am a big porn lover. I consume a lot of porn. But even for me it is enough for now.”

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