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Porn Film Archive Workshop

11. December 2021 13:00

The Schwules Museum makes its porn film collection accessible, the largest of its kind in any German institution. We invite all porn lovers to watch and discuss old gay porn flicks on VHS and Super 8 at the archive.

The porn film collection houses roughly 3.000 items and shows the variety of gay pornography from the 1970s to the early 2000s, ranging from mainstream to kinky underground productions, and from commercial tapes to private video bootlegs. Over the past decades the films came into the archive as donations by private collectors who have left personal notes and marks with them. So far, only one quarter of the collection has been catalogued. Also, only a few lesbian and trans* porn films have been indexed.

Participants will be watching and discovering porn in groups, and together we will be examining the films’ importance as historical, archival and erotic objects. Participants will get to know the collection, its place within the larger queer archive as well as the materials’ endangered physical status. We especially invite porn and sex workers, filmmakers, artists, curators and researchers to the workshop as we are also open to starting future projects with them. Yet all participants may bring their own interests and desires to the table.

Our goal is to make the collection known and highlight pornography’s preservation-worthy histories. The workshop results might indicate in which directions further work on the collection can go, including digitization and public screenings.

The workshop will be held in English by Nils Meyn, Peter Rehberg and Simon Schultz. Duration: 4 hours. Max. 12 participants (all gender). Participation fee: 10€, reduced: 3€. Please register via mail at fuehrungen@schwulesmuseum.de. The event will be following the up-to-date COVID regulations. Participants should be able to present a 2-G certificate (either be fully vaccinated or recovered).