Not all porn revisionists in New York belong to the innermost cool circle of sex positive mavericks. Sure, I did find a link on New Yorker sex activist and feminist porn maker Audacia Ray’s former Waking Vixen blog to Estelle Joseph’s Stella Films Production, but as it turns out, that’s about all the two have in common. The website is no longer there, but it impressed me when I first came upon it spring of 2006:
Stella Films Production (SFP) is a completely female-owned adult entertainment company. As an independent New York film company, SFP strives to expand beyond the stereotypical image of “porn.” The company majors on minor details to provide high-quality films that appeal to the senses and intellect. SFP movies are produced by women for a broad audience, especially for women and couples. They feature superb acting, appealing set designs, classy locations and original music sound tracks.
I contacted Joseph—a “Broadway/Off-Broadway producer and performer” and the owner and producer of SFP—via email to ask for some of her films so I could review them. She promptly sent me the last four City of Flesh DVDs in a series of six that had been released since the first came out in 2004, including a note to tell me that her films have only improved as she’s gotten more experience. Some of the DVDs contain separate episodes; others follow a single story throughout the DVD.
One thing I learned from reviewing the films Joseph sent me is that professional looking websites do not necessarily imply professional looking films. Frankly, the City of Flesh films disappointed me. I was not impressed by the acting (stiff), the set design (amateurish), or the music (monotonous thumping), and in terms of the content, there was little that distinguished these films from mainstream porn, except perhaps from somewhat more attention on cunnilingus and “her” needs and wishes. But even then I wasn’t happy, because what “she” in these films wants is so incredibly cliché: to marry a guy who dotes her with attention, a nice big house and a huge diamond ring. Or to be the boss of a company. In either case, extremely irksome. “He” on the other hand is reduced to the “typical guy;” impatient with women, insensitive, jealous, and thinks with his cock. She’s always wearing a ton of make-up, high heals and tawdry clothes; he’s always muscular and hard.
I arranged a phone interview with Joseph after I had viewed what she had sent me. In contrast to her films, Joseph struck me as a sympathetic, well-meaning person. But also ignorant when it comes to film production, and her view on porn split (as something distasteful as opposed to erotica as something nice).
I've actually come to think that a different class- and educational background (ouch!) has a lot to do with the differences between Joseph’s films and the films of, say, Ray and fellow New York hipster sex film makers Tristan Taormino, Abioloa Abrams, and Jamye Waxman. Whereas the latter four are privileged university educated hip New Yorkers, the approximately ten years older Estelle Joseph (she refused to give me her exact age) grew up in the Caribbean and made her livelihood for a while as a stripper under the name Dominique X. When she assured me that her films portray women that all her girlfriends could identify with, I could only nod to myself.
Towards the end of our interview, Joseph mentioned that she was about to make a seventh volume for the City of Flesh series with a lesbian girl sex story featuring “the best scenes” of her previous films. This DVD was as far as I can see never made. The contact information I have for Joseph is no longer valid. When I recently asked Ms. Naughty who interviewed Estelle Joseph for her For the Girls ezine in 2005, if she knew what had happened, she suggested Joseph perhaps had gone religious. That may be, but I think a likelier reason is that Joseph pulled out because her films just didn’t sell well.
-- What do you say?
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