Porn director Erika Lust awarded in Guadalajara

Erika Lust, a feminist erotic film director based in Barcelona, has received the Maguey award at the Guadalajara International Film Festival. The prize celebrates “the career and achievements of a person who, through her work, has transformed sexual diversity, breaking down barriers and showing new paradigms of sexuality and gender.” According to the festival, her erotic productions “explore human sexuality from a feminine perspective.”

Making a distinction between independent erotic films and “mainstream porn films that are hardly even cinema,” Lust said that “independent porn cinema is growing a lot,” and she expressed her hope that this continues and influences mainstream pornography. “Most porn today has fallen into the hands of people who have grabbed a camera looking to make quick money rather than art and cinema,” she said.

Meanwhile, Lust described the 'indie' adult cinema she champions as being about “flesh-and-blood people” trying to "correctly represent women on the big screen, and not as objects or characters that are there simply to satisfy men, but rather real people with their own desires, fantasies and their own sexuality,” she added.