“The concept of Latin America is a colonial fiction. We did not choose these boundaries, they were imposed on us – and yet Abya Yala, our mature land, remain alive and squirting blood. Thus, the idea of Latin America addressed in this curatorial program is as common sensitive territory, a strategic identity to approach differen regions that share a common history of indigenous and black genocide, forced Christanization, racism, epistemicide, rural and urban violence, land concentration, poverty, military dictatorships, rapes, abortion bans and other social rips resulting from colonial violence” Érica Ramos Sarmet

Érica Ramos Sarmet, guest curator of the post porn selection of the festival

The first edition of the San Francisco Porn Film Festival was held from August 19th to 23rd of this year totally online. The films selection was divided in 6 categories: Fore/Play: The Pre show, Brazen/Brits: Short Adult Films from the United Kingdom, Post/Porno: Short Adult Films from Latin America, Power/Play: Kinky and cheeky Short Adult Films, Vivid/Vision: Experimental Short Adult Films and Tell/Tale: Beautiful and Narrative Short Adult Films. With opening film Sad Girls From the Mountains and the closing film Volunteers Wanted from Ron Rex.

Each category was an exquisite and eclectic selection of films, and the exquisite was in the eclectic, because it satisfied all tastes without sacrificing quality. From documentaries of groups of people of color creating their own erotic content to beautiful images of masturbation; from an experimental video with a person in a wheelchair to proposals on how to have sex in times of Coronavirus. Without a doubt, each production had something to offer.

But this article is specifically dedicated to the Post / Porn: Short Films from Latin America category, as it is the region in which we as a production company find ourselves, which makes us, like them, a Latin American production company.

As the quote that begins this article says, the selection of Latin American shorts was special because of its discourse, because of the subversive nature of each one of them. Subversive before religion and the imposition on the bodies, which was and has been the punishment on the colonized. They play with that fine line between the status quo and art, lifting up her skirt and spreading her legs to expose her pussy in the atrium of a church in Brazil, letting the curious look and touch. Because in these productions the response to military, Catholic, social and governmental violence is to appropriate the body, to claim its pleasure. They hurt it, offer it, fuck it, claim it, confirm their dissatisfaction and irreverence in the face of national symbols and sculptures of former slavers. They question borders, racism, institutions and power dynamics.

“Sitting on the steps of the church, with my legs wide spread, I heard more voices: ‘… but … you have to come.’ I masturbated furiously, shoving all my fingers inside my pussy. I wanted to come and I was almost succeeding, although I was terrified that the police would arrive or that someone from my family would suddenly appear, materializing directly from the small town to the Plaza de Sé”

“And you San Antonio, how would you like me to fuck you?” “Open your little mouth, I’m about to come” says Aily Habibi as she goes over saints for her strapon on El Sexorcismo de Aily Habibi.

These productions pay tribute to their customs, to menstruation, to pussies, to the queer; with space for warmth and showing the beauty of this liberation of the body and sex, because the body and sex are part of the expression and because freedom begins from your own body.

The Latin American porn post is an aesthetic strategy response to articulate a political discourse of all those territories that share the same history, not only because of what happened in the past but also because of what is happening now and that is intended not only to sexual provocation but also social provocation.

“In choosing thsi term to present post-porn films of region so ethnically and culturally diverse as Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, I intend to evidence the affective-performative-political map of post porn networks which crosses geopolitical limits. Although these films come from a place of violence, they are not sad. They are taken by laughter, debauchery, the pleasure of speaking when one is silent, the chosen pain that fills us with something to say: sensations flow from the sucking and talking mouth”

Érica Ramos Sarmet, guest curator of the post porn selection of the festival

The SFPFF allowed the public to have the experience of attending a porn film festival by making viewers and participants feel members of the same community, all sharing their taste for cinema, sex and smut.

Pornorama will be present on the Porn Film Festival of Athens, Vienna and Hot Bits. Stay tuned.

If you’d like to know more about the projects that participated on the festival, click on each image