Wild Card

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. With 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. Her trilogy SILVER SHOES premiered at the London ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), screened by invitation at the Schwules Museum Berlin, and was awarded the “Movie Of The Year” grand prize at the Feminist P*rn 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 with La Fille D’O, SKIN.LIKE.SUN., has been embraced by sexologists at home and abroad for its unusually realistic depiction of female pleasure. And her artistic erotic documentary HEADSHOT, which screened at the Cannes Short Film Corner at its launch, was screened by a philosophical talk show in Europe on primetime television to half a million viewers. Taking a journey into new media, her virtual reality 3D 360° immersive experience film SECOND DATE, created in collaboration with VR pioneers Condition One in San Francisco, was nominated for a VR award at the Raindance Film Festival (London) at its World Premiere, was invited by top documentary film festival CPH*DOX in Copenhagen, and recently screened at the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. ADORN, a music-driven erotic game, has won multiple Best Film awards and will be screening at the EYE Filmmuseum this March 2021 as part of the Cinedans FEST film festival. Her newest film WILD CARD has just launched.

In addition to filmmaking, Jennifer teaches and curates erotic-themed film programs and exhibitions for museums, arts institutions, and festivals, including one of the longest running exhibitions ever at The Museum of Sex/New York (MOSEX). She was a co-director of Amsterdam’s own Rated X Amsterdam Alternative Erotica Film Festival, and a consultant for the Dutch EYE FilmMuseum’s erotic archive. She enjoys writing and presenting on porn; she gave the closing keynote, “Empathy and Pornography,” at the first ever Sex And The Cinema film studies conference at the University of Kent and has written for the Film Studies journal as well as various art publications. SXSW festival invited her last year to teach her workshop “From Fantasy To Film: Erotic Movie Design.” 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 p*rn, historical stag films, cognitive film theory approaches to erotic film, and the self-empowering creative workshop “From Fantasy To Film: Design Your Own Erotic Movie” which she has taught all over the world. www.blueartichokefilms.com