SNAP! AND THE BRUSSELS PORN FILM FESTIVAL ARE BACK FOR A 2ND JOINT EDITION

From the 4th to the 7th of May 2023, SNAP! and Brussels Porn Film Festival will
meet for their second edition in the Belgian capital. A cross event taking place in the
Beursschouwburg, Cinema Aventure and Nova!

Building on their success last year, SNAP! and BxlPFF are merging to come back stronger
for a cultural, political, and festive weekend. Dedicated to the representation of sex
workers and alternative pornography, these events contribute to the fight against the
stigmatisation of gender and sexuality minorities.

The festival weekend will be held in a particular political context. Even though, on the 18th
of March 2022, Belgium became the first country in Europe to decriminalise all forms of
sex work, there is still a long way to go, if only to change mentalities. Moreover, in the face
of our digital existences, national legislation, however progressive, is confronted with the
rules of algorithms and their logic of censorship, depriving some of us of a space for
expression, advocacy or simply of their work tool. This edition will be an opportunity to
look back on the progress made and at the work that remains to be done, hence the choice
of this year’s theme: RESISTANCE – Resistance of minoritised experiences through the reappropriation of their representations. Resistance of sex workers to abolitionist movements that deny them their fundamental human rights. Resistance to dominant norms, sexism, and stereotypes through contemporary alternative pornography. Resistance to the rise of policies that advocate censorship rather than education.

We sat down with Thomas Lavergne, a co-founder of Brussels Porn Film Festival to find out more about BxlPFF and what we can look forward to this year.

How did Brussels Porn Film Festival come about? How did it start?

In 2019, after having travelled to various alternative pornography festivals in Europe with their own films, a group of people met in Brussels and decided to create an ASBL in order to organize an event of this nature in the absence of such spaces in the Belgian capital. Faced with the effervescence that an event of this kind generates in European capitals and surprised that Belgium still lacks such an event, the members bet on the public’s demand for and enthusiasm for such programming.The first months of reflection invite all people willing to engage in the process to meet. It presents committed members with skills and experience in event organization and communication, as well as in the field of cinema, pornography and sexuality. Organizers of Offscreens or SNAP! festival, directors of alternative pornographic films, graduates in digital communication, sound technicians, projectionists, performers, sex workers, filmmakers, graphic designers, researchers in social sciences, students at INSAS, ERG and at the Beaux-Arts of Brussels, are as many varied profiles that bring their skills and experiences in the field. Thus, about thirty people attend the meetings of dialogue in order to make emerge guidelines, desires and spaces of reflection on what represents the current alternative pornographies, their stakes, the ways of making ethical, inclusive, feminist, and the defended political visions. Mapping of our imaginations, exchanges on our discoveries, our knowledge, our practices, our situated points of view, organization of thematic panels touching as much on the political histories of a cinematographic genre as on forgotten militant personalities. Reappropriation of identity of a medium too long in the hands of a few, pornographies become an object of struggle and dissident representations.If the long months of confinement shake this joyful dynamic, a team of five people, strong of these exchanges, is constituted to create the first Belgian festival which had its first edition in April 2022.More generally, through the creation of a space for dialogue, reflection, screening and visibility of otherwise minority artists, we wish to rethink the stereotypes surrounding sexualities on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, body and practice. Above all, the desire is to defend an engaged cinema that incorporates the explicit representation of sexualities. Aware that the project of a festival of alternative, queer and feminist pornography remains a challenge as the word carries infamous representations, an interloping geography, a nocturnal temporality, a societal taboo, it seems to us however essential to open a space of dialogue in a society more and more polarized and where the questions of sex and gender are controversial, where the veridictional battles rage. The creation of a safe space for exchange, highlighting the representation of bodies, practices, erotic orientations, various gender expressions, in a festive, joyful, and reflective atmosphere around a demanding program, aims to work for more equality and inclusiveness in society, to reduce stereotypes and stigmas based on ethnicity, orientation, sex, gender, class, body and physical ability.

What unusual or never before seen footage can we expect on this year’s edition?

On the one hand, the pornographic field is so rich that it is sometimes difficult to talk about never seen. The rule 34 of the Internet states that if something exists, then there is a porn version. On the other hand, alternative pornography is so little known by the public, has so little space of visibility, that for many spectators who have never attended such a festival, each session can represent a real slap in the face, a real exciting discovery, a conceptual redefinition of what pornography is, far from the preconceived monolithic image. For this second edition, the spectators will be able to see unpublished documentaries, fictions, comedies, dramas, experimental films, science-fiction, and animations. 
If you’re looking for something new, science fiction films are a sure bet: porn with aliens or ejaculating robots! We also think about the numerous animation films we received, and which shows an ever-increasing tendency to the porosity between the genres that the dominant currents of thought wanted to compartmentalize, we make believe that there would be cinema which would be art and pornography which would be obscenity.  In contrast to animated films that make their way to pornography, we received the first animated film from the famous queer porn production company AORTA films, making the opposite path. From the opening night on Thursday, May 4 at Nova, viewers will be able to see a lesbian opera in a darkroom on Venus, a film about trans parenting, a documentary about the sex life of an octogenarian couple. But it is also the sessions on sex work that can represent views rarely told by those involved.

How did BxlPFF and SNAP start to collaborate? 

While pornography may represent a legal, moral, and aesthetic category, it is also a professional field composed of sex workers, making the fusion between the two events obvious. There are common struggles: against stigmatization, against censorship on social networks at any mention of sex or sex work, depriving individuals of a platform of expression, a lack of visibility on the trajectories, a lack of credibility to the speeches of the people concerned, moral preconceptions sometimes denying fundamental rights to the actors of the sector. In addition, a large part of the team members worked on both festivals. It is also important to understand that such festivals are based on an extremely precarious economy, very poorly subsidized, and requiring a considerable amount of volunteer work for the members of the teams which can generate real sacrifices. The merger allows us to join forces on the same event.

Find the whole program on BxlPFF website – https://brusselspornfilmfestival.com/ and make sure to check it out from 4 to 7 May