ABSTRACT
One early evening in September 2008, I squeezed in at the filmmaker Mia Engberg’s workspace in Stockholm together with a group of about fifteen other filmmakers who had been invited to participate in her project Dirty Diaries: Twelve Shorts of Feminist Porn. In her invitation to the project, a few months earlier, Mia Engberg had written: “Let’s come together and make creative porn on our own terms. Let’s empower ourselves and change the view of sexuality and gender. It’s a revolution and it starts NOW!” 1 This was our second meeting, and we would get together three more times before the short film collection was released on DVD in September 2009. 2 By then, the project had gained wide international attention, not least because of its financial support from The Swedish Film Institute. The news agency AFP spread the word internationally, and the project was even mentioned by Conan O’Brien on The Tonight Show. 3 The meeting in September 2008, just like our other meetings, provided space for discussing our individual short films and creative processes, as well as the larger aims of Dirty Diaries as such. The main purpose of this meeting, however, was to go through legal details regarding profit and rights and to sign contracts guaranteeing that the performers in the shorts participated out of free will, were more than eighteen years of age, and consented to the short being exhibited as a part of Dirty Diaries. The invitation to the project had read: “The rules are simple; no one should be harmed and everyone must be older than 18. Otherwise, you’re free to do exactly what you want.” 4
