Started 2022
The term post-pornography originated in the 1990s in response to the need to broaden perspectives on understanding the body and sexuality and in order to critique mainstream pornography. Understood as an intersectional art movement, it is a platform for exploring the relationship between culture and oppression, particularly in the context of bodily autonomy, biopolitics, pleasure, and identity. Post-pornography focuses on a critical approach to the dominant socio-cultural order, testing new artistic narratives filtered through the language of contemporary and ethical pornography, understood as one of the fields of visual art.
Post Pxrn Film Festival Warsaw is an invitation to join us on a journey to the near and far corners of human desire, intimacy, and joy. Our goal is to appreciate sexuality together and take a look – without shame and prudishness – at the diverse languages used to describe it. Diversity is key: the wealth of narratives, themes, and modes of presentation enables us to not only to understand others, but also better understand ourselves, both in terms of fantasies and actual needs. We all have bodies and the inalienable right to enjoy and make use of them as we see fir. At the festival, we will present new artistic strategies employed to represent and describe this crucial area of human life.
We find ourselves at a unique moment: human sexuality, in all its richness and diversity – thanks to new media, changing attitudes, technological and medical discoveries – reveals new façades that require new and yet undiscovered languages to experience and describe it. Humanity continues to explore new forms of pleasure and tenderness, which in turn inspires film and art in the pursuit of new means of expression.
In many contemporary societies, however, sexuality tends to be oppressed, criminalized, and erased. Our bodies, as well as their depictions, are regulated and controlled; often in order to serve the needs of dominant political or religious discourses that currently deprive us of the fundamental right to own and govern our bodies. Sexual education based on demonstrable scientific grounds is marginalized and becomes available to a few economically privileged groups.
Reproductive rights are being drastically curtailed or even taken away – increasingly, we realize that the patriarchal model of society prevents its development. Selective censorship of nudity on social media distorts and degrades our body image, thus prohibiting our enjoyment and pleasure. Sex work still isn’t respected and lacks social protections, while sexual minorities operate on the fringes of visibility.
We cannot pretend things are different, but we realize that this festival’s journey – though sometimes arduous and difficult – is one towards joy, hope, and radical tenderness.
The programme of the Post Pxrn Film Festival Warsaw will focus on presenting a wide range of artistic and visual strategies – often subversive or peripheral, but always inclusive and relevant, seen through the lens of contemporary post-pornography. We will focus on performative and experimental feminist, queer, alternative, educational, biopolitical, sex work, body- and sex-positive strategies. They will help us reclaim our bodies that have been appropriated by religion, politics, and technology. We will present films created by people and collectives working outside the mainstream, whose stimulating voices seem significant for the contemporary understanding of body art. Exhibitions, panel discussions, and meetings with artists will be an integral part of the festival.
We believe that complete openness to corporeality, intimacy, and sexuality is key to understanding contemporary culture and the dynamic changes that define it. Reclaiming our bodies is the first step towards building a community based on openness, tolerance, and the right to self-determination.
Please join us on this journey from the periphery to the centre and decide where might they be located for yourself!