Barcelona International Erotic Film Festival
The hottest European event of the year in the field of sex work — the Eighth International Barcelona Erotic Film Festival — has ended at the La Farga exhibition complex in Barcelona.
Directors, producers, porn film artists, as well as artists and photographers working in the genre of heavy erotica gathered in Barcelona for four days.
The largest participant of the festival, International Film Grup (the Spanish distributor of relevant films), invited such world-famous performers as Rocco Siffredi, Silvia Saint and Sara Bernat to the porn forum. At the closing of the festival, young talented actors and actresses from all over Europe, in particular from Spain, were seen on stage — Nacho Vidal, Sophie Evans, Dolly Golden.
Those invited spent their time quite effectively: the first congress of Spanish developers of Internet sites for adults took place with the agenda “Erotic offers of the Internet environment: pros and cons.” Congress participants solved the problems of search engine optimization in the area of pornography distribution. At the same time, in other premises of the Farga exhibition complex, the Fifth Josep Blanc Erotic Art Competition was held, chaired by Luis Verlanga. A separate discussion was held among participants in the pornography business under the motto “Replacing videotapes with DVDs,” and the cultural aspects of pornography were discussed at the debate “The Influence of Religion on Human Sexuality.” As part of the festival program, pornographers and their guests were shown the Hollywood film Boogie Nights directed by Anderson about the difficult fate of pornographers in the 70s in America. As professional entertainment, strip and porn shows were held at all venues of the exhibition center, as well as in a special room called “Fetish Cafe” for lovers of sadomasochism, latex and high heels.
The stands also featured products from all of Spain's leading manufacturers of sex accessories — from condoms and dildos to rubber clothing and inflatable partners.
And now the jury, chaired by prominent porn director Luca Damiano, announced the results. The best feature porn film of the year was “Stavros” by producer Mario Salieri, the best “film consisting of 100% sex” was the work of producer Rocco Siffredi “Dirty Anal Kelly In Rome”. The prize for best cinematography went to the Italians (film «Napoli»), and the prize for best screenplay went to the Spaniards (film «Festival»).
Personal awards were distributed as follows: Director of the Year went to Alain Payet for the film «La Feta a Gigi», best actress — Laura Angel for the film «Alexia & Cie». The last film generally collected a whole bunch of festival awards; Thus, Sylvia Saint received an award for the best lesbian scene in this film, and the male actor in it, Philipe Dean, became the best male actor of the festival. Porn star Rocco Siffredi received an award only for the best anal sex scene in his own film about the adventures of “Dirty Kelly” in Rome.
A sexual marathon in L'Hospitalet is suspended
The management of the Barcelona International Erotic Film Festival yesterday canceled as «inappropriate» the sexual marathon promoted by a company participating in the contest, which consisted of 1,000 men having sexual relations with the same woman in front of the fair's audience. According to the promoters of the festival, which is held in L'Hospitalet, the company had authorization to hold the event last Friday, but not yesterday. Before the suspension, some 400 volunteers had participated in the unusual marathon.
The Barcelona Erotic Film Festival ends
The eighth edition of the Barcelona Erotic Film Festival has ended with controversy when the organization suspended the show in which the Italian actress Rossana Doll was supposed to try to have sexual relations with 600 volunteers during this weekend. The virulent criticism that appeared in the Catalan press has been the fundamental reason for those responsible for the festival to suspend Miss Doll's show. In any case, it does not seem likely that the Italian actress would have managed to reach the figure of 600 sexual encounters, since the number of volunteers did not reach a hundred on Friday night. The film production company X that organized the show failed to arouse public interest despite advertising promotion and guaranteeing anonymity to the participants.
Despite the controversy caused by the Rossana Doll show, the Barcelona Erotic Film Festival has managed to reach 35,000 visitors during the five days that this fair has lasted, in which all companies related to the sex industry meet.. The presence at the Farga de l'Hospitalet de Llobregat fairground of the main stars of cinema American pornographic film that is held annually in Las Vegas at the end of February.
Although it is fundamentally conceived as a commercial platform for the main European porn production companies to present their new releases, the Barcelona Erotic Film Festival also has a competitive section in which this year more than 70 “X” classified films have participated, coming from from the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Spain. In this edition, the “Golden Nymph” award for best film went to the Italian production “Starvos” by Neapolitan director Mario Salieri.
The film is inspired by the figure of a powerful Greek shipowner who is quite reminiscent of Aristotle Onassis and has a larger cast than usual in a porn production. Despite the quality of Salieri's film, the level of the films in competition has been very discreet since the adult film industry is not interested in producing plot films and prefers to exploit the vein of amateur porn that is cheaper to shoot and more profitable.
In this edition of the festival, the interest of the pornographic industry in using the Internet as a means of disseminating its products and the difficulties of the market in assimilating the new audiovisual formats (DVD, Laser Disc) that should replace video in the medium term have been confirmed. The commercial battle between the main porn film production companies is now on the Internet and this is what companies such as the Swedish company “Private” and the North American company “Vivid” have understood, which have been pioneers in the use of the Internet.