Dirty Diaries: 12 shorts of feminist porn (2009)

I've always thought that hardcore belongs in "real" movies. In the realm of the senses, Caligula, Paprika, Antichrist, maybe Shortbus? (I haven't seen it), the work of Larry Clark and so on, all has smaller parts of hardcore sex. There's a few experimental collections to, as the uneven Destricted - which I like parts of. In Dirty Diaries Mia Engberg has collected 12 short movies, most of them shot with mobile cameras, with what she call feminist porn. I'm quite sure the word feminist will cause some rage among conservative viewers, especially because this could be called pornography.

There's to much to say about each individual movie, but the level of quality is high and most of them has very strong concepts. My favorite is also the first one, "Skin", directed by Elin Magnusson. It's a beautifully shot sex scene between a man and a woman all dressed in a skin-colored body stocking. Slowly they cut parts of their body skin open, and in the end there's nothing left of this shell. Only humans. It's sexy, erotic is probably the best in this collection of high quality shorts. "Body Contact" was almost scary to see, because it seems so real at first. It's about a girl who want's to make a porn movie and films the whole experience together with her friend. They find a man from the southern parts of Sweden and manipulates him to be in the movie. It's both funny, and even a bit unpleasent. "On Your Back Woman" is a cute wrestling-themed short with three lesbian couple. I think cute is a good word (maybe the director will disapprove there?), but it's also strong movie with strong love.

"Night Time" is almost a conservative movie in this collection because it just shows straight sex, straigh up. No flashy video effects or fancy editing. Just a couple fucking. I guess "Flasher Girl On Tour" will be a favorite, and it's a fantastic piece of reality-cinema. The titles says it all, flasher girls shows her private parts to people who dosen't expect it! But it's made with a sharp witty humour, and I wonder how people would have reacted if it was a man doing this? Great anyway. I would love to mention all the movies, but I'll stick to my personal favorites. But one thing's for sure, this collection has no movie who dosen't belong in there.

Except "Body Contact" and maybe even "Phonefuck", there's little of classical storytelling. You could see these works of art as performance, video art or as moving paintings in a digital frame. "Dildoman" is a mean (and I don't mean in a bad way) animation which ventures into the absurd, "For the liberation of men" is a dark but passionate journey and "Fruitcake" is almost disturbing in it's likness of certain bodyparts and fruits. I would have loved to see these projected on a screen, during a exhibition or an happening. Have them around me, have them right in front of my face without any protection.

So what is feminist porn? I wanted to know that when I started this dvd. But I understand now that's something that is highly subjective. All these talented artist and film-makers was asked to make a feminist porn movie and this is what they made. So what you see is what you get, and I'm impressed. Fucking as art, and art as fucking. This is exactly what the grey country of Sweden needs!

Njuta Films has released a splendid dvd with a stylish and simple design and it all includes a handsome booklet with texts and photos from and about the movies and the makers of them.

Visit Mia Engberg's homepage for more information or go directly to your favorite retailer, for example SubDVD, and buy it! And read more about it in swedish.