Erika Lust (born 1977) is a Swedish erotic film director, screenwriter and producer. Since the debut of her first indie erotic film The Good Girl in 2004, Lust has been cited as one of the current leading participants in the feminist pornography movement,[2][3] asserting that an ethical production process sets her company apart from mainstream pornography sites. Lust has stated that she finds no issue in calling her films porn, since she expects viewers to be sexually aroused, unlike other directors of erotic films who make a distinction between their work and porn even when both types contain sexually explicit scenes.[4] In addition to directing and producing a number of award-winning films, she has written several books.[5]
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She went to Lund University, where she studied Political Sciences.[8][9] While there, she came across Linda Williams' 1989 book Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible", which would influence her filmmaking later.[9] She graduated with a BA in 1999, with a specialization in human rights and feminism.[10] After graduation she moved to Barcelona in 2000 and started studying filmmaking.[8][9]
Lust shot her first film, the explicit short The Good Girl in 2004, which became an instant hit.[11] Released online for free under a Creative Commons license, it was downloaded millions of times in several days[12] and two million times in two months.[13] The film was shown at the Barcelona International Erotic Film Festival the next year and won a Ninfa Award.[14]
In 2005, after this initial success, she founded her video production company Lust Films.[8] The company has produced erotic short films and compilations steadily from then on. Five Hot Stories For Her, an anthology of five vignettes including The Good Girl, won the Barcelona International Erotic Film Festival's 2007 Best Spanish Screenplay award,[15] the Venus Berlin Fair's 2007 Eroticline Award for Best Adult Film for Women,[16] and the 2008 Feminist Porn Award for Movie of the Year.[17] Since then she has been a regular on the adult cinema festival circuit, and in 2020 one of her films came to the cinema on a regular basis for the first time.[18]
Lust's films are characterized by carefully cast actors and high standards of production in adult film. Lust believes explicit film can be an educational tool besides being pleasurable and can help us better understand our sexuality, to live more freely and naturally. She hopes to influence viewers' conceptions of gender roles in sexuality.[19] She considers pornography to be the "most important discourse on gender and sexuality".[8]
In 2010, Lust opened an online erotic cinema called Lust Cinema, exhibiting her own films and those of other authors of the new wave of explicit films.[8] She started the first crowdsourced project in the history of adult cinema in 2013, calling it XConfessions.[8] It has become her main source of work in the years thereafter.[20]
Her film Cabaret Desire (2011) won her the Feminist Porn Award for Movie of the Year in 2012 and the CineKink Audience Choice Award for Best Narrative Feature. It was cited as an example of the diversity of porn at the 2013 Berlin Porn Film Festival providing a space for rethinking sex, sexuality, and pornography.[28]
In 2020, her film The Intern received three film nominations for the XBIZ Europa Awards including Feature Movie of the Year, Best Acting (won) and Best Sex Scene in a Feature Movie. Her film Super Femmes was also nominated for Best Lesbian Sex Scene (won) and was the first time in the history of XBIZ Europa Awards where a Big Beautiful Woman (BBW) or trans performer were nominated in a non-genre specific category. Erika Lust Films was also nominated for Global Studio Brand of the Year, and her online streaming platform XConfessions was nominated for Erotic Site of the Year.[29]
In 2014 Lust and other directors began producing short pornographic films based on crowd-sourced stories.[30] Viewers can leave anonymous confessions on the project's website. Each month, Lust handpicks two stories and turn them into cinematic short films.[31] XConfessions has been presented at the Berlin Porn Festival 2014.[32][33] The first two compilations of her XConfessions series have won her the Feminist Porn Awards for Hottest Straight Vignette in 2014 and 2015 respectively.[20]
Lust held two sold-out screenings of the XConfessions Theatrical Cut at Kino Babylon in Berlin in February 2016,[35][20] and went on to win the Best Narrative Short CineKink Award for short film An Appointment with My Master.[36]
Erika Lust was one of the female filmmakers featured in "Women on Top", the first episode of the Netflix documentary series Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On, focusing on the filming of "Hysterical Piano Concert" (XConfessions 2016). Gail Dines writes that rather than being a film of empowerment in which a female pianist fulfills a fantasy, the woman with no prior film experience is subjected to stereotypical porn sex that leaves her traumatized and in pain, but is persuaded by Lust to continue.[37] Kat Banyard states that "feminist porn" as promoted by Lust is another brand that does not challenge the mainstream, but serves as another entry point for potential customers.[38] While not in favor of any type of censorship, which she views as having greater effect on the powerless, philosopher Amia Srinivasan says that sex on film impedes the development of sexual imagination, which has a greater impact on the young.[39]
In a study of feminist pornography, Carmen Pena Ardid, Professor of Literature and Film at the University of Zaragoza, cites Lust as opening a way for women as inventors of fantasies and producers of pornographic sexual representations, but her work does not resolve the models of femininity imposed by fashion, advertising or the cosmetics industry, and the constrained social situations within which fantasies are lived.[40] Álvaro Martín Sanz, professor of film studies at the University of Valladolid, while recognizing Lust as pioneering the rejection of the heteronormativity present in traditional pornographic cinema, also finds limitations in the pursuit of beauty and the focus on fantasies rather than more realistic portrayals.[41]
This film focuses on a bohemian erotic reading gathering, where attendees can pay for privately-told stories. As such, each scene begins with someone paying for a story, and the storyteller beginning to speak. The voiceover continues into the scene until the sex kicks in.
If you are really saying that all penetration is an act of domination, and therefore the filming of it is always going to be about violence, then we are getting into a much, much bigger discussion about sex itself, biology etc.
The two-win four more matches and earn the right to a room, having reached the 100th floor. Killua warns Gon that the caliber of their opponents will increase, but Gon effortlessly makes it to the 150th floor. After cashing in his prize, Gon brings up Zushi and Ren and suggests asking the former about the technique. His explanation, however, is unintelligible to them. When Wing shows up, Killua convinces him to explain it to them. The four relocate to his hotel room. He proceeds to illustrate the Nen of the Flame to them. He first calmly states he will kill Killua, then repeats his utterance after performing the four steps, which causes Killua to leap away and Gon to shiver with fear. The two leave, but Killua tells Gon that Wing lied to them and that no mental technique could have allowed Zushi to survive a strike that should have been lethal.[53] 2ff7e9595c
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