Devine Deviance Crowd Funding Launch!

This is my second visit to San Francisco but my first time attending an event on the top floor of the San Francisco Armory. I was attending the official launch of the crowd funding for the Devine Deviance Project…a project that is important to me and that I fully support as it will cover topics/themes that are very dear to me.

“Although Divine Deviance will be by, about, and for the Kink/BDSM/Fetish community, this film and web series is also for anyone interested in the diversity of human sexuality and the creation of brother- and sisterhood outside of blood family.”

My gorgeous friend Caritia and I put on a short performance for the crowd. I do believe that she may have enjoyed placing and removing the clothes pegs on me…a little too much! haha!

Consider making a small contribution so that this project can be shared to and with the world!

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Morgana Muses: An Erotic Retrospective At the Roxie Theater

WOW, what a night and what an awesome experience! Joining me on stage at the Roxie Theater was my friend Caritia who was the emcee for the evening. Although, I always have a case of “stage fright” at public events, but I have to say that my favourite part of my public appearances is the interaction that I have with the audience members. I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of positivity in the feedback that I received.  It was wonderful to have a bunch of awesome friends join me too!

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Q&A at the Roxie Theater with emcee Caritia

 
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Life of Bi – Living With Mental Illness

Life of Bi – 2016 – Short/ Experimental 

giphyA short experimental film about living with mental illness. 

The Life of Bi is an attempt to communicate the visceral reality of living with bi-polar. 

Watch now: 

If you or anyone you know is suffering with their mental illness you can contact these organisations for help and information.

BLACK DOG INSTITUTE
http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au

LIFELINE
13 11 14

BEYOND BLUE Support Service
1300 22 4636

SANE Helpline
1800 18 7263

Morgana Muses is a filmmaker from Australia who is passionate about shedding light on the realities of living with mental illness.

Divine Deviance- A Global Kink/BDSM/Fetish Documentary Project

I’m honoured to have been asked to lend my support to Divine Deviance – A global Kink/BDSM/Fetish documentary project! This project is an international multi-part documentary project of epic proportions by and about the global Kink/BDSM/Fetish communities. The project is a very important one for me, as the themes and topics that they will tackle are very close to my heart and ones that I feel very passionate about.

I will be joining other international guests to attend the kick off  gala evening being held at the notorious top floor of the world famous Armory, San Francisco on 22nd September.

Join us at an event not to be missed!
Tickets can be purchased here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/divine-deviance-kick-off-party-tickets-27136908223

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Divine Deviance Project
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San Francisco Armory Studios

 

 

Morgana Muses- An Erotic Retrospective- At The Roxie Theater-San Francisco

I’m getting pretty excited about my upcoming trip to San Francisco, flying out from Melbourne on 20th September! The Roxie Theater kindly invited me to hold a film night on  the 21st September. A wonderful way to kick off Folsom and my first taste of Folsom.  I’d love it if you’d join me for an evening of delicious smut and an illuminating Q&A at the end of the screening.

Good vibrations are sponsoring the event and providing us with a gorgeous goody bag to raffle on the night.

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Grab your tickets here:  http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/morgana-muses-erotic-retrospective/?instance_id=14587

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What is sex positive porn? (AKA Ethical Porn, Feminist Porn, Alt-Porn)

Maybe you have heard this phrase used and thought, well, what the hell makes some porn sex positive or feminist or ethical and others not?
Great question, we hope this page can at least cover a very basic understanding of the ethics of pornography and then add a little of Permission 4 Pleasure’s values to boot.  (btw, if you want a list of ethical porn producers look here)

Enjoy x

What is sex positive porn? 

The contemporary use of the term ‘sex positive’ comes from the branch of feminism called sex positive feminism. Its the simple understanding that sex and sexuality are a fundamentally pleasurable and healthy for most* people (*of course with many of the asexual sexual identities not so much) Previous to its current usage in feminist theory, the term originated from the historical social movement of sexual liberation. Today, it’s just a way of  suggesting a general belief, that sex isn’t inherently bad. That also means the culture of shaming sexually active people as whores or sluts or regarding sex work as somehow lesser are actually false value judgement.

At Permission 4 Pleasure we use this term because we believe in agency for all autonomous beings including women (to clarify as well, we will be using the word woman and this includes all female identifying people)
We reject anti-porn feminist sentiments that all porn and performers in porn are just victims of patriarchal oppression and believe consenting adults can not only choose sex work, but also benefit and enjoy the work they choose.

We do not think it is a helpful exercise to conflate sex work and sex trafficking because it not only confuses and obfuscates the actual importance of addressing trafficking but it also amplifies misconceptions about sex work being ‘wrong’.

Of course, we acknowledge there are many unethical situations that happen in the consenting sex industry which brings us to our next question:

What is ethical porn? 

You want your tee shirts made slave labor free right? Well, for a lot of people, they want their porn to be held to the same standards as anything else. Not exploitative, not coercive or dangerous for the cast and crew and most of all, that there is transparency so that consumers can pay for the porn that matches their ethics.
Now, you may watch a video from kink.com and think, well that woman is in a cage, being tortured, surely this is not ethical porn? Well this is where ethical porn and sex positive porn come together. Some woman, really enjoy BDSM, to tell them otherwise is to deny that woman her agency to choose or decide what she wants for her life.  Kink.com also has widely public ethical practices that it employs to ensure a safe work environment.

Just like when you have a summer job in Kmart and they won’t let you stand on a step ladder without a training session on safe step ladder usage but then through either fault, accident or wrong doing you fall over anyway. Porn production companies that are ethical do their best to provide a safe work environment, it doesn’t mean accidents never happen but it is the process of providing the safest situation to do work that can sometimes be challenging.

So, that got a little long winded, but the point is ethical porn is not a single, defined practice but a series of processes that are put in place to ensure safe productions, non exploitation of performers and consensual acts between adults. A lot of porn industries are unregulated because of varied degrees of legality status, but we know a hell of a lot of great companies that do a fantastic job at self regulating and maintaining high standards for their productions.

What is alt porn? 

So this is a little different to feminist porn or sex positive because this is more of a genre. We would argue that there are two usages for this term at the moment. There is a fairly mainstream use of the term, which tends to reference the performers looking ‘alternative’ (tattoos, piercings, coloured hair) but then there is the use applied to a more broad statement of porn that is different to the mainstream. For P4P we feature older bodies, which are alternative to what you would normally see. You might also use term to describe production style (avant guard, art house porn, exotica, erotica etc)

What is independent porn?

This one is just like the regular film industry. Some people work for big companies (distributors or large production companies) but other people work independently.  There can be feminist, sex positive, ethical porn made from either category. Often independent porn is less constrained or driven by market values so you might see more alternative modes of production or narrative style.

What is feminist porn? How can porn even be feminist? 

The million dollar question. People like to say feminist porn can’t really exist, because all porn is a product of the patriarchy. If you are anything like us at P4P, you might think, “Shit, but I like to watch porn, am I just a empty vessel who can’t tell the difference between what I really want to do and what ‘the man’ forces me to do?”
Nah, its all good – you can totally be a feminist and watch porn or make porn, just like you can wear make-up to look beautiful for yourself without being a product of mass media’s beauty standards. No one is saying don’t have a good introspective look at yourself to make sure you are doing things for yourself and your own desires, but to deny that many woman know themselves and what they want is equally anti-feminist.
For a text to be feminist, it really just needs to be created by people who have feminist intent, IE a self identified feminist makes some art with her feminist lens of the world. Like in critical theory, that work is then subject to perspective from an audience. They can debate the merit of the ‘feminist’ nature of the work, but ultimately, if  a woman with feminist ideological background (probably sex positive) wants to write, direct and produce a video of herself being subjected to extreme BDSM (as we have done here at p4p) then that work is feminist. You can debate it and tell her she only made that video because- patriarchy but ultimately if we use artist intent as the bar for critique then certainly porn can be feminist.
We should also remember that multiple feminisms exist simultaneously. If one person does something feminist that won’t fit your type of feminism you don’t need to worry because its an intellectual position, not an absolute you don’t need everyone to agree with you (and guess what, no two people will, thanks pluralism) This is the same reason you shouldn’t worry about Taylor Swift ruining feminism, if you attribute her the power to ruin an entire idealogical framework you are a bigger Tswift fan that you think.

 

Ultimately, porn and pornographic material as well as sex work are a healthy, normal part of life. We (and many others) just want to make sure there are standards applied for safe, consensual, non-exploitative work environments so that consumers and workers alike can choose content that matches just some basic ethical standards that we expect in most other facets of life.

We are just humble filmmakers, so these answers are just our opinions and not cited – there are amazing academics and writers working in various faculties who write on these topics, you should use google scholar to get deeper into the topic. If you want to jump in and watch something- check out our beginners guide to ethical porn

 

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P4P performer Jade Winters – she consented to balloons being dropped on her before we did this.

Morgana – A Documentary Film.

Just over 2 years ago I decided to go public with my new career in making porn. I’m proud of my work and I didn’t want to hide. Just over 2 years ago, I met the amazing and efficient Josie Hess when she came on board one of my projects as an assistant. As soon as I saw her with her clipboard, pens and highlighters, I knew that she was “the one” for me!
Not long after, Josie introduced me to another incredible filmmaker, her friend and colleague Isabel Peppard. They both asked if I would be interested in being the subject for a short documentary…and I said yes, sure, why not?
Here we all are today, more than 2 years later, 2 years of being followed around the world, Isabel Peppard and Josie Hess have the great fortune of partnering with a fantastic producer and production company Karina Lila Astrup at House Of Gary  to finish this labour of love.
So with much happy tears, overwhelming tears of joy and tears of appreciation and gratitude for the unwavering belief and support that Karina, Isabel and Josie have in me as their subject…I am proud to announce that a FEATURE documentary in my name and about me will be birthed next year.
It’s a pretty awesome feeling to be able to say that “Morgana” is now placed firmly on a map!
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Some May Say That I Had Rocks In My Head!

Seriously, what sort of creative director would ask a performer to be filmed lying on sharp rocks and being washed over by waves at a beach on a cold, grey and wet fucking Melbourne winters day? OOPS, that would be me!

But when the topic of this short film is about Mental Health Awareness neither rain, hail or cold temperatures was going to deter or delay me in wanting to get on with the start of shooting. The plus side, it never feels like really hard work when awesome and efficient Josie is the cinematographer, as we always end up having lots of laughs along the way!

Most surprisingly, I actually found it quite relaxing lying motionless on the rocks, just listening to the sound of the waves rolling in!13735114_518846048314403_7740622974797295019_o

Mad Dame Glitter Shoot! Body Positive experience

A full body positive glitter experience.

If there is one thing I know in life, it’s that glitter and duct tape will help mend most anything. In the depths of my depression I wanted to give myself an uplifting experience to look forward to and hopefully tempt me out of the “bed fort” that I was reluctant to leave. So last week I booked myself in for a full body glitter model shoot, with the amazing Mad Dame Artist.  Ms Josie kindly acted as ‘my driver’ to  ensure that an awesome, shiny and incredibly fun experience was not missed.
“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.” – Akira Kurosawa

It was a completely uplifting, body positive experience that allowed me to take stock of my mental health for the day.

When all else fails…Sprinkle Glitter on it!

http://www.mad-dame.com 

The end results, glorious aren’t they?!

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Morgana & Mad Dame
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Morgana & Josie Hess

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P4P Films Selected To Screen At Festival Pop Porn6.

It’s always a thrill when our films are selected to screen at a film festival. This time receiving news that three of P4P’s films have been selected to be screened at this years Festival Pop Porn6 on June 10-12 in Brazil. 

Our past collaborations with Anna Brownfield ‘Music Box’ & ‘Happy Birthday Mistress’ are still proving to be favourites at festivals, along with our newest film ‘Having My Cake’.

A big thrill was having the solo masturbation scene that I performed for Bright Desire ‘Scarlet Woman’ also being selected to screen at the festival.

It’s always such a satisfying feeling for Josie and I, that our films are being selected, embraced and enjoyed by such diverse audiences around the world.

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