Second Date (VR)

Forever wishing that all movies had longer and better sex scenes, Harvard graduate Jennifer Lyon Bell decided to mix arthouse cinema with hot explicit sex in her own work. The founder of Blue Artichoke Films (Amsterdam), she creates erotic fiction films and documentaries that illuminate the riveting, intimate, and sometimes delightfully awkward side of sex.

Her award-winning films screen at international festivals, cinemas, and museums all over America, Europe, Japan, and South America, and her body of work recently won the 2015 European Feminist Porn Award. Her most recent film, the trilogy Silver Shoes, premiered at the London ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), screened by invitation at the Schwules Museum Berlin, and received the “Movie Of The Year” grand prize at the Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto. Her explicitly erotic fiction film Matinée has won three Best Film awards including one from the Melbourne Underground Film Festival which it won by jury prize -- even though the film was technically banned from the festival by the Australian Classification Board for its intense sexual content. Her love/porn collaboration Skin. Like. Sun. has been embraced by sexologists at home and abroad for its unusually realistic depiction of female pleasure. And her arty erotic documentary Headshot, which screened at the Cannes Short Film Corner at its launch, broadcast recently on primetime television’s Zomergasten for half a million viewers. Her upcoming virtual reality 3D 360 degree film Second Date is probably the world’s first erotic orgasmic clothed VR film.

In addition to filmmaking, Jennifer evangelizes for sex-positive art by curating erotic-themed film programs and exhibitions for museums, arts institutions, and festivals including The Museum of Sex in New York (MOSEX), Ladyfest, Monkeytown, and the San Francisco Indie Erotic Film Festival. She was a co-director of Amsterdam’s own Rated X Amsterdam Alternative Erotica Film Festival, and a consultant for the EYE Film Museum’s erotic archive. She enjoys writing and presenting on porn; she recently gave the closing keynote, “Empathy and Pornography,” at the first Sex And The Cinema film studies conference at the University of Kent and has written for the Porn Studies journal as well as various art publications. A trailblazer, she taught at the Dutch Film Academy (NFTA) in what may be the first ever erotic film workshop offered at a national film school. She was the alternative newspaper Amsterdam Weekly’s first and only sex columnist, “Ladywood”. Her current workshops include alternative/feminist porn, historical stag films, cognitive film theory approaches to porn, and the self-empowering creative workshop “From Fantasy To Film: Design Your Own Erotic Film” which she has taught all over the world. www.blueartichokefilms.com