This month, Pornfilmfestival Berlin (PFFB) is celebrating two decades of sexual expression beyond the mainstream. The original festival of its kind, here you can find everything from erotica to arthouse to intersectional political documentary to hardcore cowboys to dirty dykes – all that encompasses the realm of pornographic moving image. One is just as likely to find explicit categories of any fetish or kink as an academic discussion on the work of avant-garde filmmakers. The Berliner sat down with Walter Crasshole – queer punk, porn critic, co-author of Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution: An Oral History, Alaska native and one of the seven curators at the PFFB – for a 20-question deep-dive into the festival’s history. Between exegeses on DIY smut and queer cinematic insurgency, Crasshole teases the festival’s 20th edition and shares some memories from years past.
When did you personally get into porn?
I was part of the queer punk community scene in San Francisco, and I had a friend, Courtney Trouble, who was making this porn website called nofauxxx.com. She asked me if I wanted to be in porn at some show we were at in the Mission, and I said yes. I did it with my boyfriend at the time, and it won Best Feature at the PFFB in 2009. Then I moved here, and she made a sequel to that film, and it was the opening film at the PFFB the following year. It was fun because I remember getting here and people in the subway already knew who I was, and I was just like, ‘Who are you?’ It was this French [porn actress] named Judy Minx, by the way – she’s not a nobody! But at the time I had no idea of European female porn stars. She was like, ‘You’re Walter Crasshole!’ She had seen me in Roulette. I started visiting the Pornfilmfestival frequently as a writer, and then I got involved.
What’s the biggest difference this year from the very first year?
Clearly the numbers have grown from then to now. PFFB has become known as the mothership internationally. It’s the one that everyone goes to and is inspired to do their own, which is great. We’ve had curators come before they were curators, visiting from Brazil, Poland, San Francisco, Rome, Amsterdam, Vienna. They would visit the festival, start their own and then they’d come back and still visit us, because they love it.
PFFB has become known as the mothership internationally
What’s the biggest misconception about what you do?
The PFFB title is used tongue-in-cheek. We do show porn, but people are like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t wanna watch hardcore porn in a theatre with people!’ But we’re not just that. We chose the name ‘porn’ specifically to give mainstream society a ribbing, but also to take some of the edge off it. In reality, it’s films that deal with sex and sexuality, gender and its politics – all body politics. Of course, a large part of that includes explicit sex, but it doesn’t mean we only show hardcore porn. We’re also very supportive of the sex work industry: in our case, adult film industry actors. We think it’s important to support them and talk about what they do, both in art and work.
What’s a standout moment where you thought, ‘What we’re doing is pretty cool?’
When I was there as a guest and a visitor, seeing the amazing community around the festival, seeing these incredible discussions and talks surrounding porn cinema – in the 2000s, that was radical. I actually still think it’s quite radical, but back then it was certainly much newer to be talking about sexuality in such an open forum. Using the word ‘porn’ was still taboo – we always knew we wouldn’t get state funding because of this. So going there and seeing all these excited artists and sex workers was very punk rock, very scrappy, and I was like, this is a cool thing to do. And then the next year I wanted to cover it for Exberliner, so I began blogging about the festival. I just knew from the second I was there – it was so open and so refreshing to have people talk about sex and pleasure and film in this way.
Who has been the most famous person to attend?
Closest to my heart would be Wakefield Poole, he was so sweet. He was around 75 when he came, and he died not long after he visited us. He’s iconic. He shot these absolute pieces of art, gay porns in the 1970s. The guy was a fucking visionary in terms of filmmaking. And he came because there was a documentary on him that same year. You learn how he grew up and was a ballet dancer on TV, then he got into production and the arts. And then somehow he fell into the scene where porn was made. He made Boys in the Sand (1971) and Bible! (1974), which are really amazing. So many amazing, important films. We gave him our very first Lifetime Achievement Award the year he came, because for a man that accomplished and important to come, it was really special. We also had Georgina Spelvin at the festival, recording a video intro for us. She’s also quite old now. She was the star of The Devil in Miss Jones (1973). And she recorded a cute video that was like, ‘I don’t know why anybody would be interested in watching me!’ It was adorable. Annie Sprinkle has been many times. Bruce LaBruce. Peaches. I mean, I think that’s our wheelhouse in terms of our level of fame. We’re kind of underground.
What’s the naughtiest moment you can share?
When Chatroulette was a thing, basically nobody was actually using it for chatting. People were just jerking off with each other on it. So [festival founder] Jürgen Brüning set a camera up facing the cinema with the audience on one side of the Chatroulette, and we just went through it and tried to meet people. We did it on straight and gay Chatroulette. On gay roulette people freaked out, because the cinema was obviously mixed-gender; straight roulette they were a little more open. But it was really funny to see people freak out. At some point someone did stick around long enough to coax one of the audience members into doing something for them. This guy basically ate this woman out on the steps, on the seats, so that was real sex in the cinema – we were all participating live. It was all consensual, no one had a problem with it. That was definitely the most intimate and naughtiest moment.
How have trends in porn changed over the time?
People don’t watch full movies anymore! But I mean, everyone knows that – it mirrors the porn industry, and society, at large. People don’t make feature-length adult films anymore, because people don’t buy them. They don’t want DVDs, they want clips. And when it came to scenes, there weren’t any scripts. It would be someone on the couch and someone walking by with a vacuum cleaner. It went from these kinds of features to amateur scenes, to people filming in their living room, to something like the whole pay-per-click service industry and OnlyFans. You can see how porn has changed over time through the retrospectives we show; each PFFB, we’ll show a large amount of porn from the so-called golden age of pornos – the 60s and 70s – as part of our curations each year. We’re a contemporary festival, though, so we don’t want to slam the viewer in the face with it.
Have the festival’s priorities changed as global politics have shifted?
In general I don’t think they have. I think our approach to what we screen has remained the same. The main thing to underline here is we are all about showing quality films first and foremost: that’s what’s most important, and that’s never really changed. Culturally we’ve always been a little more left of centre – left of Berlin, even. For example, visibility for trans people was already there in the first catalogue; we already had a marker for trans programming. We have the keys for our programme, so people know what they’re getting – straight people don’t have to watch something they don’t want [to]; neither do gays or lesbians. So [with] this visibility and awareness, we’ve been shaping the festival around concepts of gender since the start. It might be better reflected today, but not in the case of how we approached it – just maybe now we have a greater amount of material to show. I think mainstream society has caught up to us!
What can someone expect walking into PFFB this year?
Great films, sexy people, cool discussions, lots of partying. It’s really crowded – you walk in and it’s buzzing, full of cute, sexy, interesting and political energy. People are having conversations about the way the industry is going or what’s queer, what’s not queer. Lots of great films, great discussions in the lounge – the lounge is one of my favourite places to be. Amazing parties at night. We have a play party this year. Some great opening films. The Filmtheater Colosseum is new to us this year, hosting our opening event. The place is huge, so it’ll be a spectacular event, hosting everyone in the foyer of this new cinema afterwards. It feels super old-Hollywood.
What’s the opener?
Fucktoys (Annapurna Sriram, 2025) is our amazing opening film. It’s fucking sick, Sriram is so awesome. She’s an absolute pleasure to work with in terms of organising things. The film is gorgeous to look at, shot in 16mm film – it’s just a whole other world. The festival’s made up of 37 features this year. And then we have 17 short film programmes, which run about 90 minutes. We have no idea as the year starts what we want to do theme-wise with each sexuality block – for example, there’s a programme this year called ‘fine trash’. It’s trashy, off-the-wall porn that isn’t taking itself seriously at all. You could almost put Fucktoys in that category.
What’s your approach to programming the lineup?
As a team we come together and decide what we want to have and what we like, and then we decide what we’d never show because it’s, say, problematic or terrible or just doesn’t fit the festival. We’ve thrown out many good films because they just don’t fit the festival. Then we take the remaining films and say, ‘Okay, we have gay here, we have BDSM here, we have lesbian here’, etc. Our core programmes every year are gay, lesbian, queer, trans, usually political, usually Berlin, BDSM and fetish. And then what’s left are the outliers. We see what way people are thinking. Animation is really hot this year, or maybe there’s a lot of cowboy porn. It’s cool – we can’t predict the zeitgeist, but we can represent it. Even if the people making the films don’t realise they’re onto something, we then become the place where we can be like, ‘Someone in Brazil, Italy and Finland have all made cowboy porn, it’s a big theme this year.’ Actually, to be honest, I wish I was seeing more AI porn. And I don’t mean porn made with AI. I mean, films that are addressing the topic of AI. That’s one that I’m surprised we don’t have more of.
People are surprised that there’s not a lot of masturbating
What can be a surprise for someone attending PFFB forthe first time?
That you can bring your grandma. Maybe not to it all! But there’s no law against it. I have heard of older friends bringing visiting parents to go see something generally more friendly that’s a little on the light side. You don’t have to take them to like, ‘Piss Porn 3000‘. Oh, and that there’s not a lot of masturbating or sex in the cinemas. I think a lot of people assume this! People are surprised that there’s not a lot of masturbating. It happened finally, not last year but the year before; someone did and it didn’t turn out so well. Someone came out of the theatre and was like, ‘Look, there’s a guy in the corner and he’s touching himself inappropriately.’ And we were like, ‘This has never happened before!’
What’s a fun fact about the festival people might not know?
We were at Kant Kino for one year, and people thought it was funny, because it sounds like cunt. Well actually nobody thought it was funny except the Germans.
What films have you screened that have gone on to be impactful?
Pleasure (Ninja Thyberg, 2021) was one that had some impact. A lot of people were worried that our audience wouldn’t like it. I thought the film was great, because it’s kind of critical of the porn industry, but not completely. I think it’s just honest, showing one girl’s story of wanting to go into porn and finding some porn that she wanted to do and some porn that tested her boundaries. It brings up the idea of what’s ethically questionable to a person and what one is willing to do to get to the top of the ladder. I thought it was an honest film, but people were sensitive at this time about sex workers and people in the porn industry getting thrown under the bus – which is by and large true, that in society people still deem sex work as not legitimate and undeserving of rights. There was a bit of a backlash for people to not say anything critical at the moment. And we were like, ‘No, we can hold all this up with a critical light.’ It’s a great movie and has gone on to be acclaimed.
Most heartwarming moment in two decades?
Honestly, it’s usually the little speeches before and after in the lounge, the shots we do in the lounge, and the hugs and the tearful goodbyes at the closing party after the awards are given out. We got a really heartwarming message from Emre Busse after he won Best Short Film last year. That sort of thing. It’s about a connection with the community – that’s really the best.
