GAY AND LESBIAN PORNOGRAPHIC ART FILM FESTIVAL

BERLIN PORN FILM FESTIVAL in ATHENS

Once in Paris, around 1997, Marie Helen Bourcie (now Sam Bourcie, writer and professor of gender studies) took me to a small movie theater with English subtitles, and we watched a Bruce LaBruce film, Hustler White. I was thrilled.

Several years later in a gay shop in Berlin I discovered that he had recently released a new film and I immediately bought it.

When I watched it I loved it like crazy and decided that I wanted to show it in Athens, so I emailed him and he replied immediately. As luck would have it, his producer lived in Berlin, so I went to meet him. That’s how my friendship with Jurgen Bruning began. Producer of Bruce and owner of the gay porn company KazzoFilm and later of WurstFilm.

I brought them, Jurgen and Bruce, to Athens (2005), screened the film with great success and a few months later with Jurgen’s help (he did the programming) I organized the Gay & Lesbian Pornographic Art Film Festival. There, I also brought Maria Beatty whose work I admired.

There was a queue as long as three city blocks and Jurgen exclaimed, “If you can do this in Athens I can do it in Berlin,” and we agreed that next year he would start it in Berlin and I would bring it to Athens which is what happened.

In 2007, with the help of Nikos Triantafyllidis (owner of the Gagarin club), I started the Berlin Porn Film Festival in Athens for a few years.