Erika Lust on Erotic Pleasure and the Future of the Porn Industry

Erika Lust on Erotic Pleasure and the Future of the Porn Industry

Erika Lust is an indie erotic film director who portrays sex as the beautiful, diverse, and vulnerable thing it is.

She sat down with us for an interview on her directing experiences, the nuances of erotic film, and her hopes for the future of the industry.

What do you do for a living, and why is it awesome?

I’m a Director of Independent Adult Cinema. I’m a cinephile. So I love movies and series. I love cinematography, creativity and innovation—and those are exactly all the things which are involved in my amazing job!

What’s been one of your biggest challenges in making porn as diverse and inclusive as XConfessions?

Actually it’s not a challenge for me—making diverse and inclusive erotica is my passion! I always wanted to transport certain values and I am always very conscious about what I am doing.

Making people aware of what they are watching and trying to raise the standard of porn is more like a challenge for me.

People need to start recognizing that most of the erotic movies they watch online are like porn “fast food”—it’s like eating unhealthy McDonalds while you could get a proper home-cooked meal.

In your films, how do the personalities of your cast members play a role in shaping the story you envisioned?

I choose my performers because of their characteristics and their personality. They need to identify with their roles and put their own spirit into the play. I work with very professional and almost all female crew and it’s vital that the performers feel comfortable. Everyone I work with enjoys their job and is passionate about the work, behind and in front of the camera. It’s about the good salaries we pay, the effort we put into choreography, lighting, scripts, postproduction, finding different body types for the casting, having fun at the set. It’s about performers who are acting in their most natural way, having equal and enjoyable sex. All those little things merge together to create a substantial difference.

How do you stay positive about your work when there are many people who question the validity of feminist porn?

One thing that keeps me very motivated is the huge amount of positive feedback I get from people who watch my films. Women and men. They say they like my films because they get a positive feeling after watching them, they like that they can relate to the characters and sex happening on screen. This is all I need to keep myself motivated and positive about my work and also the work of other great directors. There is a huge demand for feminist erotica, which is great. The industry has been in the hands of the chauvinistic mainstream porn directors for too long. People start understanding that feminist porn is something beautiful, hot, and full of narrative and content, and it’s definitely worth watching.

What are your hopes for your future and the future of pornography?

Changing the world of erotic films! Or at least making it a better place. Nowadays everything is visualized and society has global access to the internet. People at young ages should not get a blurred view on sexuality just because of bad porn. I think it’s important to show young people different sides of sexuality. And porn has the ability to do it! It’s a discourse on our sexuality. I learnt this from reading Linda Williams book Hardcore. Porn has the power to make a statement, an idea, expressing ideologies and values, and also opinions about sex and gender. So it’s important we use it to it’s full advantage to represent values from all part of society.

You can read more about Erika Lust on her website and some of her work on Lust Cinema or XConfessions.

Image courtesy of Erika Lust.