Silvia Marcantoni Taddei (any pronoun is fine) (1994) is a nonbinary multimedia/multidisciplinary artist. Silvia works with their husband Massimo Sannelli (1973) in AnimaeNoctis duo since 2019 and officially started working as a post-porn artist in 2023. Silvia considers porn the basis and the sum of all AnimaeNoctis’ activity. Silvia’s movies have been featured in PFF Barcelona, PFF Vienna, Hacker Porn Film Festival, Satyrs & Maenads, POST P_RN ARTS FEST, San Francisco Porn Film Festival. They are also available on PinkLabel.TV. Silvia’s porn movies are never fictional works but real documentaries of a real sexual life.
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When did you start to work with explicit / pornographic material?
OK! Massimo and I… My name is Silvia Marcantoni Taddei. I am 30. My husband is Massimo Sannelli, 51. As a duo, we are called AnimaeNoctis. Anyway, Massimo and I consider ourselves as 1 single author: AnimaeNoctis. We have started with filmmaking and performance between 2021 and 2022, so we have always dealt with naked bodies and risqué contents. In 2021 we also made our first erotic short: The Greatest Problem For The Ego. But it wasn’t public until 2023, when we started making porn more widely and we got selected for Porn Film Festival Barcelona.
What is your motivation to work with explicit / pornographic material?
After music, filmmaking, photography, modeling, performance, dance, porn art looked to me and Massimo like the natural summing up of all of our arts: kinda the gist of them all. Nudity and sex are the most natural things, yet the most censored ones.
What is the difference between mainstream-pornography and post-porn?
In post-porn, it looks like there is a different porn for every director. Post-porn is not only focused on pure sex. Although I like to keep things pretty explicit, there are many levels of showing sex in post-porn, from “a lot” to “almost nothing”. Post-porn gives more space to narration and experimental techniques of editing and coloring + powerful soundtracks. I was astonished by The Lesbian Alien Darkroom Fisting Operetta On Venus by Lasse Långström, something in between Georges Meliès and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I also loved the tender powerful surrealism of Troy Daniels’ and Puscle Mussy’s sex in Heavy Load. Orlando by Paul B. Preciado is not really porn, but it’s a manifesto: invention transcending genres and genders. OK! Post-porn taught me self love and love for the others. BDSM is not my thing, but I have to admire and appreciate the fine aesthetics and the deep philosophy of pain by Manon Praline in Merci Madame Manon or Inside Out, or the moving witness of Lena in Shibari Turk by Yavuz Kurtulmuș. Because healing is a neverending process…
And what about the confidence? Jiz Lee and Vanniall in Transit or April Flores’ dances in Disco Thicc? Simply amazing! Finally, post-porn is officially including any kind of people: you can meet actors of every ethnicity, with all body types, self-expressions, queer, disabled, etc.
What are the topics of the stories you want to tell?
The very column of my post-porn activity is the short video called Silvia Overcomes Depression – One Shot. There I finally faced my severe depression and sexual harassment after years of silence. All of my movies are based on the overcoming-depression attitude: real sex and art life with Massimo + lots of metacinema moments where I reflect on what I have just filmed and why. Because healing is a neverending process.
What are your ethical standards in your films?
Our porn art is not fiction: it is a dappled set of explicit documentaries. The sex you watch happened in our lives. It was not made just to film it. We sexually live and film. That’s why Massimo and I use our true names and full faces. That’s us. I hope our works will give you pleasure, whatever pleasure you are looking for. Because I know too well what’s like to feel VERY down.
How do you finance / fund your projects?
They are all self-funded. We AnimaeNoctis make money with art and invest it in art again. Also, as multimedia artists, we are used to do everything by ourselves: directing, acting, editing, music, graphic work and so on… This dual work helped us keeping costs low since the very beginning, and it became a trademark. Finally, lots of the items you see in our movies are taken right from the garbage. They are someone else’s rejects. We like to give them a new life.
How do you collaborate / network with other filmmakers or performers?
We must psychologically support each other. This is the first task. I follow a lot of LGBTQ+ forums and groups on social media and I read terrible stories of rejection, discrimination and solitude every day. Lots of colleagues, and myself too, belong to the queer community. So all of us need to be boosted. Healing! OK! And creators who are not queer have to face all the risks of being porn. So all of us need to be boosted.
Which role do (post)-porn film festivals play for your work?
A tremendous one. Even in the digital era, we do believe in the relevance of meeting people face to face. There are so many great folks out there. We love to see the live feedback to our movies, to watch others’ movies on the wide screen… Plus, porn film festivals are very funny and safe spaces where we can easily express ourselves. We will never forget the support we have immediately received and we are receiving every day from Porn Film Festival circuit. We are thinking of amazing creators like Adrineh Simonian, Yavuz Kurtulmuș, Menelas Siafakas and Jiz Lee. They really helped us reconstructing our lives, in and out of the movies.
How does the internet affect your work?
The Internet censors my work… And yet it boosts it. Of course social networks are very strict when it comes to sexual matter and they oblige me to invent new communication tricks all the time. But sex and censorship are a great pair to catch the audience attention. And I will always be thankful to the Internet because it connects us. In times where politicians only inspire division and hate, good relationships beyond boundaries are the key.
Do you share your works on platforms like OnlyFans, Fansly, Pinklabel, Arthouse or even Pornhub?
Yes! I have a studio on PinkLabel.TV. I worked with ArtHouse Vienna as well, but unfortunately it closed. Adrineh Simonian made such a great space “where sex and cinema touch”. I hope they will touch again.
How do you work with social media?
We use Facebook and Instagram. Both of them show our art activities and lives: expecially as porn artists, private and public life are coincident for us. In fact, this doesn’t mean we have no privacy or no personal situations that we are not sharing with anyone. Just our profession doesn’t have secrets. We document everything because everything is potentially art.
In the time you work in this field: what were the biggest changes?
What changed? OK! I could say: both nothing and everything. We think that we have been doing porn all our lives. But post-porn and our own natures are the complete opposite of the values we were raised with. When I started, this caused me some doubts and sense of fracture. Then I learned to embrace my attitude. I dropped the hypocrisy I had trained myself to believe in in order to be accepted. And I felt OK.
How open do you communicate about your work with your friends and family?
Our closest friends know about our porn art and support us, as they are friends. When it comes to families, we prefer to be silent. How many parents would be happy with a porn child? Hija de Perra’s mom was happy, but how many parents are like her? Porn is art and art is work. It would be so nice to say “Dad, Mama, I’m working!”. And they would ask you: “What kind of work, honey?”. You would answer you deal with porn art and they should be so utterly proud of you. If genius Maurizio Cattelan can live on a duct-taped banana, why can’t I live on porn movies? Let your banana talk for itself. But it takes also a bit of caution with families: so we are cunningly used to talk and not to talk. Honey… OK!