Website: https://athenspff.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Athenspff
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/athenspff
Interview with Menelas
When did you start your festival?
The festival started in 2020, the year of the Covid.
What is your motivation to run the festival?
I had been making art porn films since 2015. I had, participated in Berlin Porn Film Festival, discovered other festivals, and then I was wondering why, we don’t have any festivals in Athens. Which we did. We had a porn film festival between 2007 and 2012. But, Maria Cyber, the director, was too tired to run two festivals because she also did the queer film festivals of Athens, called Out View. So I decided it is time to start one again. My motivation was to bring to Athens this world of art porn, post-porn, and also to help Greek productions because I think we have a lot of great, local artists that need a little bit of a push. So these were my motivations and it’s still kind of the same motivation to run the festival.
What is your curatorial approach?
We have an open submission on our web page without any fees. And the curatorial approach is: I like variety, I like short films. It’s mostly a short film festival. We have an opening long film and a closing long film, but the rest is short films. So one of my approaches is the shorter the better. I like variety, I have pretty fixed categories based on the common categories which are based around sexuality. Gay porn, lesbian porn, queer porn, trans porn, fun porn, political documentaries. BDSM, fetish. So my curatorial approach is, also apart from varieties, to have all different styles and levels of production. And if something is interesting and kind of meets the ethos of the festival, then I pre-select the film. And then obviously when you have to make a curation, there’s the time constraints, the arts and variety. I try to think of the viewer -what their experience is. So the time of the short, the style of it short. To balance things like long and short, serious and fun. So these are the kind of things I take into account.
What is the difference between mainstream pornography and post porn?
I think post-porn is a movement that started as a protest against mainstream pornography. So my understanding is that it started in the late 80s and 90s from women, porn stars, particular women. Porn stars, like Annie Sprinkle, who did not see themselves as consumers of this porn. So the male gaze and the porn being filmed to maximize the pleasure of a man rather than that of a woman, so they can’t relate to it.
So they started doing, their own thing around female sexuality, centering on the needs of women and things that women would like. And another aspect is how commercial that is. So the main focus of mainstream pornography is: it is seen as a business venture. So, people are trying to make money from pornography.
And that means that a lot of production choices are centered, are informed by the need to make money, whereas, post porn is more political, more artistic. It tries to convey a message. It tries to, inform people, to educate people, who are the consumers, the viewers. It focuses a lot on gender politics, gender identity, the needs of women, different sexualities.
So I think post porn is something, that focuses a lot on ‘what else can you bring to a porn movie apart from the sexual gratification?’
What are the ethical standards for the films that you show?
One of the things that we can more easily control is the message and the tone of films. That they’re respectful to women specifically and the different sexualities and gender identities.
That’s something you can check easily. And we would hope that the production is done in an ethical way, whereas all the performers and people who participate in the production, that their boundaries are respected and that they’re not feeling financially exploited.
Of course, in terms of production, it’s a little bit more difficult to check that as such, whereas the actual message and tone and the messages that the films portray are more easily checked. For example, in quite a few cases I had to send a rejection letter saying this feels a little bit too much like mainstream, and it’s very male focused. I usually invite these people to have a look at what is being played at the festival. So they get the tone and what we’re trying to do.
How are the reactions from authorities, city or church?
We haven’t had any reactions as such from authorities for the Athens Porn Film Festival. Firstly, because we don’t ask the authorities for any financial or any other production aid. So they don’t really know we exist over this. This year we were featured on the Instagram account that is called ‘This Is Athens’, which is run by the municipality of Athens. So I would say, that the reaction was positive, that they understood that this is an event which is worth for tourists to check out. The church hasn’t really responded to that.
We had a lot of cool, free press articles about the festival, which have all been positive. And this year we had an article in a very low quality newspaper, which focuses on scandals. They had a two page article and the picture on the front page, where they tried to portray it very negatively. But actually, at the same time, I think because of lawsuits, they had to be very informed.
So they did a lot of research about the program of the festival and their tone was quite violent. At the same time they were like ‘oh, this is horrible’, but at the same time it’s like ‘oh, but it’s adults, and adults can do whatever they like in their free time.’
Reactions from the citizens: generally, we haven’t had any negative responses, no protests, so far. So people are coming to the festival enjoying it. All in all, I would say, the reactions from citizens are good.
How do you finance or fund the festival?
First of all, it is self-financed. It is extremely low budget. Something between 1500 to 2500€ total cost. I use my personal funds to do this and I cut a lot of cost by co-producing with the venue. We split the profit of the tickets and they provide the building. That way I don’t have to pay rent for the space. That keeps the budget pretty low. And it is a conscious choice to do this, to not depend on the state or some sort of art foundations, because they would impose a lot of limitations and they will start saying ‘but if this is, maybe I can turn this down.’ I didn’t want to do that. So: self-funding.
How do you collaborate or network with other festivals?
This is very important. I have a very good relationship with the Vienna Porn Film Festival, who’s warmth and support helped me realize the Athens Porn Film Festival. It’s important to discuss ideas with them and ask them questions.
What we do every year is that I have a section that presents films from their country or from their festival, like a selection of some. So we’ve had the Vienna Porn Film Festival, The PopPorn from Brazil, we had the Exccentrico film festival showing their stuff from Chile. We had the Istanbul Porn Film Festival as a festival that hasn’t existed yet, but, we wanted to support it and hopefully work towards its existence and in the fifth year we had Courts Mais Trash which is a trash film festival in Brussels.
And they brought us a selection of their sex and sexy films that are ridiculous and funny at the same time. So it’s important to collaborate and network with other festivals. Especially another thing that has to be taken into account is the timing, the dates of the festivals and for example Hacker Porn, Brussels, Vienna, we and Poland/Warsaw, we’re pretty close in April to June. So I always consult with them when they plan to have their festival, that we don’t clash. This this would be quite bad.
And also working with other film festivals: In Warsaw, I did a presentation of Greek Porn Film Festival, from our porn and I’ve done it in Vienna. I’m working with a Queer Festival in Cyprus to do this. It is important to do this.
What influence do you think the festival has to the city it takes place?
Hopefully it creates an atmosphere where people can have a more open discussion about porn. And what porn is, ethical porn. I think it’s not something that I could quantify, but I think just the fact that it exists is important. It is certainly, in terms of one of my goals, which was to increase local production of art porn. This has been quite successful. I think the impact on queer artists and porn artists has been quite good. They now feel more confident about doing a film that is more sexual or very sexual, openly sexual. And they know they have a place to show this kind of work.
To the rest of the country: I’m not aware of any influence. I did a shorts screening, like a one session screening, in Thessaloniki but it wasn’t very well attended. So I’m not aware of the influence of the festival in Greece in general.
How does the internet affect your work?
I think it wouldn’t be possible without the internet. We use the internet to advertise the festival to do the open call. We use the internet to communicate with all the artists. We use the internet to take all the films. And so I think without the internet a film festival would be much more expensive, much more difficult to run.
Do you have an online version of your festival?
Yes, because we started in 2020 we didn’t do a physical version. So we started with two years of online. And the Athens Porn Film Festival is the first Porn Film Festival to do an online version. We work with Pink Label TV to do this.
And they were very interested in setting up something like this. So the Athens Porn Film Festival was like a test festival for them and then they did the San Francisco Porn Film Festival online as well. So after the two years of online and when we started having the physical version of the festival, I continued doing the online version.
It is important, because the artists and the filmmakers are international. And it is a way for me to give them access to see the festival because not everybody can travel to the festival. So, an important part of an online version is to give a free ticket to all the filmmakers that have been selected.
And, so far, we have kept it. But online festivals are becoming more difficult because less people want use them. So it’s becoming, now, questionable whether at least financially, if it’s worth the effort. So up until this year, we’ve kept it. I would need to think about next year and if the ticket sales are going to meet the costs or not.
How do you work with social media?
We have an account on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter. I think most of our work is done through Instagram. And then Facebook and very little on Twitter or X. We advertise a lot about things that are happening. we do the open calls on there. So, Social media is very important.
In the time that you do the festival: what were the biggest changes?
One of the biggest changes was to go from online to physical. That was a huge change, because the first two years were done in my living room, on my own. So when I went to physical, I needed to do more work and I needed to start using other people to help.
So, that was one of the biggest changes. And in terms of the physical, which has been done three years, I guess we haven’t had really huge changes. This year we experimented with a free festival event and a program announcement event. So that was a big change this year. And we also looked at expanding the parties.
So one of the big changes was to have more parties, because parties bring people together. So I think those were the biggest changes. And also I think another big change this last year was to bring in Viola V to do all the social media campaign. We were looking more closely at the brand and how we present ourselves visually. And keeping that consistent. So I think that was another big change, which we feel has paid off. We have attracted definitely a lot more people organically on our Instagram site.