Filming The Female Gaze in Porn

The film industry, and that includes the adult film industry, has always had a lack of women in charge. The female gaze in adult movies has been underrepresented and pushed aside for far too long. For this reason, In 2017 I decided to use my own funds to start an open call for female filmmakers in porn to find directors who shared my mission to change porn and create quality porn for women. We are proud to call ourselves a creative hub, a home, for women in pornography.

The number of women working in porn, in front and behind the camera, pushing for pleasure equality on-screen is growing. Representing the female gaze in porn is at the very core of Erika Lust Films values. Making space for the perspectives of female filmmakers, DoPs, script writers and producers shapes the films in a way that is different from the porn we’re used to. We need the female gaze in porn to teach us about women’s desires and female pleasure and to open our eyes to the harsh inequalities women still have to face all over the world.

To celebrate Women’s History Month, you can sign up to our platforms XConfessions, Lust Cinema & Else Cinema with a big discount for the entire month of March!

I’d like to introduce to you some of the women I work with who are breaking barriers, questioning social norms and creating beautiful adult cinema for everyone who believes in mutual pleasure and gender equality.

Casey Calvert
Casey Calvert is an award-winning director, performer, producer and writer living and working in LA. We started working with Casey when we were looking for new directors who shared our love for a realistic representation of human sexuality and sex. Casey began her career in 2012 after graduating from the University of Florida with a film degree. Casey’s first directing gig for Lust Cinema came in early 2019. Her series "Primary" was a huge hit exploring diverse and authentic modern-day relationships. Since then, Casey has directed many Lust Cinema Original Stories such as Rose, Spark or Home for the Holidays. Casey’s work is a great example of the amazing things that can happen when we put women in charge of adult cinema.

Sally Fenaux Barleycorn
Sally is an afroeuropean filmmaker and writer based in Barcelona. Sally joined Erika Lust as a director for XConfessions. Her work often plays with dystopian futures and genre-defying fantasies. Sally likes to explore a deeper human consciousness and contemporary themes about the societies we live in. Her films Touch Crimes, Another Sex Dimension, Tinder Taxi and Blind(ed) Date were huge hits on XConfessions. Sally’s approach to adult cinema is simple and beautiful: sex is part of life. And if we, as filmmakers, as creatives and as women want to give people an insight into another life, we can not leave sex out of that.

Lis Freimer
Lis is a Venezuelan photographer and videographer who decided to venture into erotic cinema in 2020. Her short films for XConfessions, Carpe Diem and Xocolate, were both shot in Venezuela and are beautiful and emotional Caribbean love stories from a female point of view. Currently, Lis is studying to continue growing as a director, filming in the Caribbean with an increasingly female lead crew.

Julia Patey
Julia is a Canadian film director currently based in Berlin. Her work blurs the lines between reality and imagination to create sensual experiences using immersive cinematography and ASMR-like sound design. Entr’acte was her adult cinema directorial debut on XConfessions. Julia believes that through watching porn, you can learn a lot about yourself and your own desires and that’s what makes it so worthwhile.

Inka Winter
Inka Winter is an erotic filmmaker and founder of ForPlay Films, an independent, all-woman porn production company. Inka’s work is all about sexy, consensual female pleasure. She sees erotic filmmaking as a means to change existing repressive social norms around sexuality and the effects those have on individuals and society at large.
Her films stimulate the senses through sexual chemistry, consent, autonomy, and the female gaze. Because Inka believes that education and emotional wellbeing are a central part of a healthy sex life, she started the YouTube channel Sexucation, which aims to provide adults with factual information, often with the use of comedy, on topics such as birth control, cunnilingus, polyamory, and how to communicate during sex. You can watch some of Inka’s best movies on LustCinema!

Brittany Franklin
Brittany Franklin is a socially driven Filmmaker from New York City. Brittany aims to produce stories that showcase the experience of underrepresented groups in film and media. As a black, hard of hearing woman in film, Brittany believes it is her responsibility to shift the narrative of media to one that is open, accepting and challenges the way an audience thinks. She has founded Cerebral Entertainment Studios to create and launch an open marketplace to eradicate inequality in entertainment and provide support to productions that are looking to satisfy inclusion riders. Her film Ignite is all about hidden fantasies between strangers!