Publicly funded ‘feminist porn’ to premiere

'Feminist porn' movie Dirty Diaries, which received 500,000 kronor ($69,000) in public funding, is to premiere this Thursday in Stockholm.

• Feminist porn 'challenges traditional gender roles' (1 Sep 09)

The collection of 12 short pornographic films, all shot on mobile phones, is the brainchild of feminist documentary filmmaker, Mia Engberg.

"Porn has always been made by men for men," Engberg told news agency AFP, explaining her reasoning for shooting the Dirty Diaries.

"Above all, it's about showing sexuality through a female's perspective. It's not made to please a male audience and it's not made to make money," she added.

Engberg said what makes Dirty Diaries feminist is that it displays women's sexuality in a natural way and shuns what she perceives as mainstream porn's sexist tendency to treat women as objects.

"I think this is the future. The most popular genre now is homemade porn made by ordinary people," she said.

Clips from the films appear on Engberg's website, www.dirtydiaries.se, carrying titles such as "Flasher Girl On Tour" and "On Your Back Woman."

All of the filmmakers are either female or identify as female (one of the filmmakers was born male).

The fact that the project received half a million kronor support from the Swedish Film Institute has attracted criticism from some quarters.

"My main issue with this is that taxpayers' money is being use to fund pornography. The fact that it's feminist porn seems to somehow make it okay but there would have been an outrage had it been regular pornography," Beatrice Fredriksson, co-founder of the Anti-Feminist Initiative blog and a member of the Moderate Party's youth organisation, told The Local.

But Engberg brushed off criticisms that funding X-rated sex movies with taxpayers money was a waste of funds.

"We are producing 70 minutes of high quality film...it's just 500,000 kronor. They couldn't spend the money any better," she told the AFP news agency.

When asked by AFP if she opposed the Swedish film body backing mainstream pornography, Engberg said: "They should not be given any money at all, especially when they are making money out of women's bodies."

In an interview on the Swedish Film Institute website, the group's head Cissi Elwin Frenkel defended providing the money for the film.

"Everyone in the films is over the age of 18, no one is doing anything against their will, everyone shares equally in the money from the films," Frenkel said.

"All of this makes Mia Engberg's project different from regular porn in many ways. This is an ambitious project that in both form and content lives up to the demands we set for the projects we support," she added.

Dirty Diaries premieres at the Bio Rio theatre in the inner-Stockholm district of Hornstull this Thursday evening. There will be two further public screenings of the film at the same venue, on Saturday and Sunday. Engberg was quick to point out that the film is available on DVD – together with an interpretive booklet – from Wednesday, and can be ordered from the project’s website.