Yes, I have finally moved into the digital age and you can now purchase all my film online!
However, if you like to rock it old school style you can also get The Bedroom on DVD, which is a strictly limited edition of only 100 that are hand numbered!
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| Zahra Stardust in The Bedroom |
I’m very excited to announce that The Bedroom will be the opening night film at the Berlin Porn Film Festival on October 26th 2016.
This date will also correspond with the release of The Bedroom online and in a very limited edition DVD. I will be attending the festival and you can live tweet along with me #bedroomparty
Big thanks to all the awesome people who contributed to our crowd funding and helped us make The Bedroom.
More details soon.
Lots has been happening since I last posted. I really am the worst blogger on the planet!
Firstly, I have just launched the crowd funding for my new film The Bedroom!
Its an erotic film that is set in one bedroom over six decades and looks at the development and changes in sex and sexuality in Australia!
I’ve got a great cast on board including Zahra Stardust, Angela White, Chloe B, Lily Rei and many more.
So please come and give us a hand making the bed!
In other news THREE films I have worked on over the past 12 months will be screening at this years Berlin Porn Film Festival! They are” MusicBox” and”A Call for Help” by Morgana Muses and Zahra Stardust’s film, “Fuck Dolls”. I wish I could be there this year! Michelle Flynn and Ms Naughty are two of the filmmakers in focus! Australians are rocking the festival!!
Last month, I spent a highly entertaining night listening to sex positive feminist, Tristan Taormino talk about her very interesting life and journey to making porn films. It was a captivating and fascinating two hours. Tristan is a great public speaker and if you ever get the chance to hear her talk I highly recommend it.
She spoke about her ethical approach to her actors: good pay, reasonable hours, providing safe environments, and giving actors the freedom to do what they wished rather than dictating to them. It was strange to hear this referred to as ethical treatment of actors in explicit films as I thought it was the ONLY way to treat actors, but then again I have chosen to forge my own path and not be dictated by the mainstream industry, and I guess that what makes the difference.
I decided to get up and ask a question about safe sex and the use of condoms in her films, as it is one of the things I feel very strongly about and think as erotic filmmakers it is very important to promote, especially as there is a rise in sexually transmitted diseases (which I find shocking, as choosing to have sex with someone is also about making a respectful choice to use condoms). Her take was quite different and I do wonder how much of it is dictated by the studio she worked for or if it is as she said, a choice she let the actors make. She was actually quite surpised how many of them would rather have sex without condoms!
The evening also gave me a chance to catch up again with Louise Lush, who I haven’t seen in the flesh since “The Band” screened at the Berlin Porn Film Festival in 2009. Wow how time flies! Finally, I got to meet two actors/makers I have been wanting to meet, Angela White and Liandra Dahl. We where all standing around being total video/film nerds getting excited talking about RED and Lexus cameras, steady cams and jib arms! Pretty funny!
I actually stood next to Angela White for quite sometime until I realised it was her! In the photos she has sent me she looks like an amazing amazon, yet in person she is still amazing but petite. She had just returned from a month in the US filming scenes for her website and was looking forward to going home to several terabytes of video footage and begin editing!
Afterwards, I was hoping to talk with Liandra further about her films, but unfortunately she had to leave early, but we did catch up later that week. She came by my office and we talked non stop for 2 hours. I could have spent the rest of the afternoon talking with her, but unfortunately prior commitments prevented us from doing so. However, I’m sure we will have many more discussions in the future.
It was great to be surround by such a wonderful group of sex positive women and so nice to talk openly about sex without anyone looking shocked, disgusted or horrified, but that it is just a natural part of life. This is what I love about Pleasure Salon gatherings!
Hats off to amazing sex therapist, Cyndi Darnell from Pleasure Salon for organising yet again another sex positive evening. Pleasure Salon holds monthly nights in Melbourne and I highly recommend you go and have a look, they are always informative and interesting.
In other news:
I’m giving a talk at Melbourne University this Friday 4th May at 12:30pm about Feminist and Queer Porn, for their “Rad sex and Consent week”, which is free! I’m looking forward to it but I’m also slightly nervous that Shelia Jefferys and her anti sex minions will be on hand! However, the organisers look like they are providing a very safe space for people to discuss and explore sex and its many variations through workshops and talks. If you want more information, check it out here.
Must go and finish practicing my talk. Hope to see you there.
One thing I’m finding hard at the moment is trying to work out where to next, in regards to filmmaking. I’ve got several projects I’m interested in but can’t work out which one to put my energy into.
This morning, I watch the soft trailer for Petra Joy’s new film “The Female Voyeur” and got all sentimental about being at the Berlin Porn Film Festival and meeting her. Petra is one of the many wonderful women I meet and she has a highly unique erotic style. We both share similar passions for promoting a variety of bodies and sexual acts that your normally don’t see. I highly recommend you check out her work if you are interested in an alternative to mainstream depictions of sex!
It filled me with the desire to make my next erotic film “Screwed in Suburbia: Perfect on the outside, Perverted on the inside”. Its about a young woman trying to escape suburbia and move into the inner city.
The other project I have been toying with is an adaptation of a book by Australian author Emily Maguire, “The Gospel According to Luke”. I first was introduced to her work through a book called “Taming the Beast”, which I would love to make into a film, but the subject matter is so taboo I think it would be extremely hard to find finance to make it! She also interviewed me for her book “Princesses and Pornstars:Sex and Power and Identity”. I still remember the day she contacted me and I put two and two together and realised she was the author of such a twisted and confronting book as “Taming the Beast”! You can guess I was absolutely ecstatic about being interviewed by her!
“Man Made” is a documentary I would like to make as a follow up to “Making it handmade” which is going to be about men, craft and what it is to be a man today! I’m slowly finding subjects and researching but I’m guessing, its going to be at least a two to three year project like “Making it Handmade” was.
So you can see there a lots of ideas but I’m finding juggling motherhood, working and making films to be overwhelming at the moment. I desperately need to update my website so have decided to focus on that and then try to work out where to go next!
I hope you all had a good, relaxed silly season!
Yet again its been way to long toooooo long since my last blog. Its amazing how life gets in the way, especially when a child is involved, who needs your love, care and attention!
Just to update you all…the screening at Bendigo’s (or should I say Eaglehawk’s) Star Community Theatre went well. There was a good turn out considering that it was a week or two before Christmas. If you are every in the area go and see a movie there. The theatre is in the old town hall and has its original projection room. Apparently, it screened movies for the 1920’s til 1950s when TV took over. The projectionist told great stories about how they used to stager the film times between Bendigo and Eaglehawk so that once it finished in one cinema it could be sent on the tram to Eaglehawk. If for some reasons there were delays they used to pay a kid to take it over on their bike!
The q and a afterwards was very interesting. Belinda Moon who is a local Bendigo crafter and runs “The Square” craft market told a great story of the smaller crafter triumphing over the large multinational chain store (whom shall remain nameless for legal purposes!). One day when Belinda was in said nameless chain store, her son with toy in hand, said “Look Mummy, there are your cards!”. To her surprise, they indeed looked exactly like her cards, in style and design, but only the colors had changed slightly. Turning it over she discovered the cards where produced by a Melbourne based company, who had then manufactured in China. To cut a long story short she engaged a lawyer and even though the large said unnamed chain store did not admit their guilt, they did pay her out! Yah! One for the little crafter! After having heard so many stories of independent makers being ripped off, it was lovely to hear a triumphant one!
In other filmmaking news, I have been very quite, but the new year has spurred me on and I have begun transcribing the interviews I did with female erotic filmmakers while I was at the Berlin Porn Film Festival in 2009( has it already been nearly 2 years!). I’m hoping to turn it into a 30 min documentary about women who are redefining the adult genre. I’m not sure what it will be called yet. Any suggestions? One I’ve been floating around is “Doing it their way: Female erotic filmmakers reinvent the adult genre”, but I think its too long. I had such a inspiring time in Berlin and got to meet so many amazing women who were doing similar things to myself with the adult genre. It made me feel as though I wasn’t alone in the fight to break free of the cliches of adult films and to create unique films, that were still erotic and sexy. Listening again to the interviews, has make me want to attempt another erotic film, so I have started on a script set in the suburbs, as we all know despite the outward appearances, they are full of sexual creatures who hide behind closed doors!!
The creative juices are following and I am feeling inspired again after feeling like I was lost in mummy world. While mummy world has been great, I realise more and more how important it is to be creative. I remember saying quite dramatically, if I couldn’t make films I would die! Now, having experienced a period where I have been unable to put any energy into making films, I don’t think I was being dramatic at all! It has brought home to me how important it is to my happiness to be creative. Do you feel that passionate about something you do?
Knickers Making Day from a Kaotic Kraft Kuties Gathering.
Last week, after an extremely unproductive and frustrating week, I have decided to take a rest from writing “Talk to Me”. It was driving me nuts and I kept trying to do everything else to avoid writing. As one of my music teachers said when I was a child “procrastination is the robber of time and thief of opportunity!” So rather than continue the torture I have put the script aside until I’m once again ready to face it and make a more concerted and positive go of it!
In the meantime, my hands have not been still and I have begun rough cutting “Making it Handmade!” This is bringing me considerable joy and after three days I’m nearly half way through it! Why is making films so much more fun than writing them!!!??
“Making it Handmade!” is the first real documentary I have attempted. I’ve been shooting it for about a year now and the editing skills I learnt while working as an editing assistant under the brilliant Tony Stevens last year has been invaluable. Thanks Tony you rock!
I’m hoping to have a rough cut finished by the end of Feburary, so I must return to FCP and continue.
No doubt I will write again before the end of march….but if not keep an out for an article I wrote on the Berlin Porn Film Festival in Metro Magazine.
Happy New Year. I hope you all had a good break. Mine was spent painting the lounge room, which is now a lovely shade of yolk yellow and white!
After a recent heat wave here in Melbourne I am once again back in my office typing away. First port of call for the new year was two articles on The Berlin Porn Film Festival and some of the brilliant women I meet there, Candida Royalle, Petra Joy, Ovidie and Shine Louise Huston. This also meant I finally got to view the armfuls of film I brought back with me from The Berlin Porn Film Festival. A few stand outs were “Champion: love hurts” by Shine Louise Huston, a seriously hot and queer film for women that was beautifully shot, moody and brutal at times. It was great to see some real porn for lesbian rather than the high heeled hetero male fantasy we are served up in mainstream pornography. Petra Joy’s “art-core” Female Fantasies, great art direction and excellent sexual chemistry between the actors. Jennifer Lyon Bell’s serious sexy short film called Matinee and I revisited Ovidie’s Stories of Sex(es) which is still hilariously funny and sexy at the same time.
“The Band” is showing at the Athens Porn Film Festival this weekend, so if you happen to be in Greece please go out and check it out!
I’m still wading through the rewrite of “Talk to me”. I was hoping to have it done by the silly season but it didn’t happen so I have until the end of the month to make it work! Then I will sink my teeth into creating a trailer for “making it handmade” which should be up on Youtube sometime in Febuary, but I’ll let you know.
I must return to my re-writing and I promise to post more regularly this year than I did last!
Yes, as you can guess from this post
s title I am busy trying to knock out another draft of my telemarketing musical that is a lesbian love story called “Talk to me” before the silly season takes over and I spend too much time consuming excessive amounts of food.
Its hard to believe that it has been a month since the opening night of the Berlin Porn Film Festival. After my last post, my days just became a blur of interviewing some of the amazing female film makers at the festival and being interviewed myself.