‘Watching porn and masturbating is a great way to pass the time’ say Phile founders Erin Reznick and Mike Feswick
Scroll through the timeline of pretty much any social media platform right now and it’s highly likely you’ll soon come across a meme centred around a distinct lack of sex or a straight-up thirst post. With much of the world locked down in isolation as we ride out the COVID-19 pandemic, and many people separated from even their lovers, a collective horniness is sweeping the globe: with sales of sex toys rocketing and porn sites reporting huge jumps in user numbers. You always want what you can’t have, as the saying goes, and, along with trips to the beach and a glass of cold, cheap rosé in a sunny beer garden with our friends, the tender touch (or not-so-tender, depending what you’re into) of another living breathing human being seemingly ranks pretty high on our wishlists.
“Sex is always appealing, but especially now,” says Mike Feswick, who co-founded subversive erotic magazine Phile alongside partner Erin Reznick. “People are reeling and grieving from this seismic change and our sexuality is not divorced from these experiences. Desire corresponds with vitality, and sex or sexual excitement helps us feel alive. It’s important to engage with these feelings, whether we’re alone or have company. It helps us get a sense of who we are, and it’s going to make isolation a lot easier to endure.”
Thankfully, the duo behind Phile has done us all a favour by launching an online archive featuring a specially selected line-up of erotic films designed to see you through these increasingly bizarre and surprisingly horny times, with feature-length movies, sensual shorts, and original submissions sent to them by their followers currently making up the listings. With the archive set to be updated and added to regularly, works by the likes of Marina Abramović, David Cronenberg, Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and James Bidgood's Pink Narcissus are all part of its first wave.
“Sex is always appealing, but especially now. People are reeling and grieving from this seismic change and our sexuality is not divorced from these experiences” – Mike Feswick
“We created the archive to centralise queer and erotic media, and to offer a database for our audience to explore and hopefully use as a source to create their own material,” Feswick explains. “There’s not only art films, but also documentaries, vintage pornography, public service announcements, erotic videogame play-throughs, and early internet ephemera. It’s a capsule that we weren’t planning on releasing just yet, but, given the circumstances, it felt like the right time to give our audience the chance to explore. Watching porn and masturbatng is a great way to pass the time.”
Citing The Piano Teacher, Stranger by the Lake, and In the Realm of Senses as just a few of their favourite erotic works, Feswick claims all the usual qualities that make a film great are what he looks for when selecting films for the archive. “Character depth, the story arc, exciting visuals, and a good soundtrack are all important,” he confirms. “But a good erotic film has the ability to turn you on to something you would never normally consider. Even if arousal is not a goal, erotic films act as a window into history: they can showcase intense, obscure, sometimes shocking sexual expressions and how they relate to the time they were created in. Sex is inherently political, so sex on film often acts as a kind of commentary, and that is endlessly fasincating to us.”
Here, Phile’s co-editor-in-chiefs select four of the archive’s films to get you started, and encourage you to submit your own here.
SECOND SKIN, DIR. JULIA HENDRICKSON (2019)
Second Skin, Phile’s newest original production, offers moving portraits of a variety of sploshing or WAM (wet-and-messy) fetishes from a distinctly female point of view.
KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS, DIR. KENNETH ANGER (1965)
Kustom Kar Kommandos observes a young male buffing a customised hot-rod as the camera creatively exemplifies details of the car that make it beautiful. Anger’s choice of camera work implies an erotic charge and signifies the man and the vehicle as lovers.
CONSPIRATORS OF PLEASURE, DIR. JAN SVANKMAJER (1996)
Described as a ‘sexual feast’, Conspirators of Pleasure presents six characters and their bizarre sexual fetish-fantasies. At once kinky, grotesque, and hilarious, the film brings us into the secret, very personal lives of some very ordinary people.
UN CHANT D’AMOUR, DIR. JEAN GENET (1950)
The only film directed by this notorious novelist and playwright is set in a prison with three main characters, a guard, and two prisoners. Separated by a stone wall, the prisoners fantasise about each other, or others, are miserable, cry, dream, dance around, masturbate, share the smoke of a cigarette through a tiny hole in a wall, rap messages, or simply noises, to each other. Though Genet denounced the making of this film, it is considered to be a voyeuristic, confrontational, and poetic masterpiece.
View the full archive here.