SAN FRANCISCO—Festival organizers have announced the official slate for the 2024 San Francisco PornFilmFestival, returning Aug. 17 to 18 to the Brava Theater with short film screenings, artist talks and workshops, and streaming Aug. 15 to 31 online, powered by streaming adult platform PinkLabel.TV.
The festival’s fifth-anniversary edition is presented with the support of sponsors MakeLoveNotPorn and AP Clips. The festival is a multi-generational celebration of the industry's history and a look forward to the innovations of today's adult moviemakers.
The festival is a curated collection of over 80 productions that explore human sexuality, intimacy, power and pain, and span experimental to documentary genres. Attendees can look forward to in-person and virtual screenings, socials, filmmaker chats, and editing and intimacy coordination workshops. The festival features a lineup of the latest productions premiering this year, celebrating a collection of well-crafted and thought-provoking erotic and adult movies from the Bay Area and beyond that "push the genre" by expanding the cinematic landscape of sexuality.
Film festivals rely on the support of foundations, grants, donors, advertisers and volunteers. However, unlike most film festivals, adult-oriented festivals are typically unable to secure large funding as they are excluded from state and government subsidies and shunned by mainstream sponsorship. Despite limited resources, the San Francisco PornFilmFestival is committed to providing a quality experience for global audiences that recognizes the value of erotic art and labor, without which there could be no festival. With its annual fundraiser, organizers invite the international production community and its best allies to play a major role in helping the event secure an accessible theater venue and ensure artist stipends. Backers enjoy VIP passes and pre-sale tickets, exclusive limited-edition t-shirts, PinkLabel.TV gift cards, on-stage acknowledgment and more. Donations of all sizes are encouraged to meet a $7,000 campaign goal.
2024 marks the festival’s fifth anniversary. Launching in 2020 during the COVID pandemic as an online-only live-streamed event, organizers rallied to create a broadcasting platform that allowed uncensored streaming of adult content. It took on the virtual editions of fellow festivals worldwide so that the show would go on. As venues reopened, the festival organizers were committed to continuing as a virtual hybrid event, welcomed by a global community of like-minded moviemakers, curators and fans. This year the festival has accepted over 80 titles screening over the course of four days. The festival is also presenting workshops for the first time, addressing topics from editing to intimacy coordination.
Festivities begin online on Thursday, Aug. 15 as FORE/PLAY kicks off a special 24-hour selection of over 20 titles for unlimited screening all day on-demand.
On Friday, Aug. 16, artists will come together at 11:00 a.m. PT, streaming online from across the seas in the MEET/GREET director chat. Later that evening at 6:00 p.m., the festival opens with a virtual screening of the shorts program REEL/SEX, showcasing documentaries. Highlights include A Body Like Mine, an intimate glimpse into performer Puck's lifestyle, inspirations, fears and experiences; the animated film Squirting—a history of female pleasure, an overview of over 2,000 years of the cultural history of female ejaculation, from squirting goddesses to the sex tips section of Cosmo; Rated X, which focuses on how female performers such as Luna Corazon and Charlotte Sarte empower themselves through their adult jobs; The Boys Who Sit Down to Pee, a unique documentary from Malaysia, Singapore and the United States documenting two gay men from different parts of the world who met and unexpectedly discovered a shared condition: hypospadias, a birth defect affecting the urethra's positioning.
On Saturday, August 17, the festival gets physical with a directors' workshop and two shorts programs broadcasting live and in-person from the Brava Theater. At 4:00 p.m., Better Than Sex: The Movie Magic of Editing Porn, led by festival director and award-winning moviemaker Shine Louise Houston, introduces key principles and editing concepts to workshop participants. The first in-person shorts showcase, ART/SMUT, screens artistic and experimental shorts at 6:00 p.m. with titles including Ikaros Reborn, a poetic retelling of the Greek myth of Ikaros, shot on location on the Grecian isle of Ikaria; and Jackob et Jim, a British twist on the classic blue movie which was informally shot amongst three friends on a ciné-camera. Guest artists include Chris Noon, whose American film Hunger is an exploration of an isolated psyche shot on 16mm film. Later that night at 8:30 p.m., explicit creativity continues in FUCKING/FUN. Highlights include Heavy Load, reinventing classic gay porn narratives with a mix of animation; A Quick Fix, a trans lesbian remake of the classic plumber trope starring queer porn icons Manon Praline and April Flores; the sexy and comedic Bad Witch; and an animated video game-inspired adventure, Funghi Boost. Guest artists include Bay Area’s own Shine Louise Houston of the surrealist POV Meet the Camera, and Jenny M Lederer, of the silent-film homage Hat Trick.
Sunday, August 18 is back in the theater with the festival’s final workshop, Intimacy Coordination: Negotiating a Safe Scene, at 4:00 p.m., led by FilthyFemdom director Fivestar and focusing on applying safety considerations for all production sizes and power dynamics. POWER/PLAY at 6:00 p.m. spotlights kinky titles, with standouts including Elemental, a kinky Dutch ecosexual journey through the four elements; At His Whim, starring Black trans leather kinksters Jamal Phoenix and Daddy Anansi; Portuguese feminist gangbang Checkmate; and American gay fetish antics in Silly River Pups. Guest artists include Bay Area queer porn director Courtney Trouble, Hall of Fame industry icon Sinnamon Love, festival crush Bodacious Beautee, whose Yes, Miss Love presents a high-chemistry femme4femme power exchange; and Rachel Britton, director of the comedic BDSM short Beat It. The festival comes to a grand finale at 8:30 p.m. in SEX/SCENE. Guest artists include BRXE and AXGE, the French psychedelic post-pornographic lovers and collaborators behind Morillon III; Silvia Marcantoni Taddei, one half of the Italian duo behind experimental sex tape Lick Me!; and Lilly Sparks from Afterglow, American producers of the movie Arousal, by Anna Lee and Andy Zane. This global ensemble of titles celebrates joyful sex and bodies, representing the latest in contemporary, conscientious and creative adult moviemaking.
A closing night party will take place at the Brava’s beautiful historic lobby.
Join festival organizers and directors for photos on the red carpet. The entire festival then goes online on August 19 with RE/PLAY, offering festival programs and Q&As on-demand until Aug. 31. Follow the fest @SF_PFF on X and Instagram.
Direct inquiries to [email protected].
Early tickets can be purchased through the festival fundraiser.
Following Aug. 1, pre-sale tickets will be available on the festival's website, sfpff.pinklabel.tv.
