Porn director Erika Lust became one of 2019's 100 Most Influential Women by making adult films into a space for dialogue on gender roles and equality on both sides of the camera. Here's how she elevated porn through cinematography and storytelling, while reviving the female gaze. To get a free 7-day trial and 25% off, visit blinkist.com/som
[Niklas]: Erika Hallqvist and her Husband Pablo Dobner have a very successful, little family owned business right in the heart of Barcelona. There, deep within the Catalonian streets, next to little cafés, countless designer studios and cute little tapas bars, this lovely couple set up shop, creating and handcrafting what has become a beautiful and very sought-after product. - Erika and her husband Pablo make porn.
[Erika]: Yeah. I hadn't even, ever thought that I was gonna become Erika Lust but I kind of did.
[Erika]: You know it all started I would say back back at university and I was studying political science and I was a young adult a young womany, young Swedish woman I was born in Stockholm and and I was curious about, about sex as everyone.
[Erika]: I had this kind of typical experience of you know with kind of all started with with a boyfriend. He came around to my dorm room with videotape because it was zero and. And then we watched it and I I have this feeling that that somehow he was he was so kind of inspired and happy with what he was looking at. But I have the feeling that the role of the woman was too much about pleasing the man. And that it was very little about her actual fantasy and her actual sexual experience.
[Erika]: And I kind of realized that most of my male friends they had a very easy time with pornography
[Erika]: But most of my female friends they had had similar experiences to mine.
[Erika]: I kind of got into trying to understand pornography and investigating it.
[Erika]: And for the first time I was seeing porn that was made from a woman's point of view from a female perspective. The you know the female gaze as the main objective.
[Erika]: And for me it just felt fantastic. It it it all kind of came together and I saw that oh my god there's actually a possibility of doing it differently.
[Niklas]: This is the story of how Erika Lust turned the obscure world of porn into a platform that opened a conversation about gender roles and gender equality - both in front of the cameras and behind them. Creating explicit content that has rescued the largely forgotten female gaze. Proving that pornography can in fact be “for him” and “for her” simultaniously. Elevating it aesthetically with beautiful cinematography and engaging storytelling. Catering to a huge and hungry market that had been ignored for a very long time.
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[Niklas]: The Erika Lust story begins on a hot summer night, where a beautiful Swedish girl met a handsome Argentinian boy in a bar.
[Pablo]: I met Erika in the summer of the year 2000 in Barcelona. I enter a bar called Benidorm. It was a bar in the old quarter of Barcelona
[Erika]: And suddenly this man walked in through this small door at this bar.
[Pablo]: and I was wearing a red Kenzo shirt.
[Erika]: A read shit, exactly the same color as my dress.
[Pablo]: I normally don't dress in red. I don’t wear such bright colors
[Niklas]: That is Pablo, Erika’s now husband and CEO of Erika Lust Films.
[Pablo]: and then this girl came to me.
[Erika]: I just went up to him and said “Hey, we are wearing the same color”
[Pablo]: She said look we're wearing the same color which by the way was the color of the bar which was predominantly red and she'd told to me. Still today I am amazed, because it's not every night that you go out and a gorgeous woman comes up to you and start a conversation.
[Pablo]: And well it was the beginning of the mobile phones so I asked her for her mobile number and I text her ah the following day to invite her for a nice dinne...and the rest is history.
[Erika]: Every summer when I had my my summer holiday from university I was coming down to Barcelona to study Spanish. As a Swedish you know Sweden is a very small country. Swedish is a small language. If you want to get out of the world you kind of need to learn other languages. And I kind of fell in love with Barcelona. I just kept coming back where I started to come here in the summer of 97 and I was back 98 99 2000 you know and then suddenly I said Oh my God I love this city. This is really where I want to live.
[Niklas]: And so, Erika packed her little suitcase and decided to leave her cold Swedish hometown and move to the much warmer Spanish metropole.
[Erika]: And then I realized that I had studied political science and Barcelona is not you know this kind of city where there is lots of international organizations and you can easily get a job in which something related to political science. So reality obviously knocked on the door and I needed to earn some money and to find you know something to do.
[Erika]: And I had friends working in the audiovisual industry most of them were doing advertisement because you know at that time a lot of European advertisements were shot here in Barcelona. And I had friends that knew that I was looking for a job and they offered me to do basic things. That's kind of how I ended up in the audiovisual industry.
[Erika]: You know I started as as a runner and a driver and a juice maker and you know I was I was working doing any kind of production job that came around.
[Erika]: And I realized that I just loved the whole kind of atmosphere of a film set. Everything about it. And I am a good observer and a good student. I really you know started to figure out how it all worked and little by little I started to advance. You know I became a production assistant and then I became a production manager and location manager and a producer…
[Erika]: Aand at the same time I mean film had always been kind of my passion but I never ever thought that I was going to be able to work with it. And and then this opportunity kind of came around to do a short film.
[Niklas]: Erika had worked hard and she managed to climb up within the TV and TV commercials industry. But If you want to become a director. Well, you have to make your own stuff.
[Erika]: It's you know the normal way you advance when you start study cinema there's always a point where you need to do something yourself. So I had the opportunity to do a short film and I think that was really the moment when I started to put all of these thoughts that I had had years before at university together. And I asked myself what is important to you. What Kind. What kind of film do you want to do?
[Erika]: And then I realized that I wanted to do an erotic film that I wanted to do something even maybe more than erotic. Maybe even an explicit film you know. And I kind of I've started writing down my ideas and I came up with this little script of a film called “The Good Girl”. And it of course also had to do with with myself and my moment in life and how I felt like you know the typical kind of good girl always expected to do the right things and being there for others but maybe not thinking that much about herself.
[Niklas]: The ambitious young filmmaker had found her vision and the type of stories she wanted to tell, the types of films she wanted to make. But creating a short film is not an easy task. Apart from the vision, the idea and writing a screenplay, one needs equipment, locations and a crew, which all costs money. Or at least a couple of favors.
[Erika]: Of course I had a lot of people laughing at me thinking that I was kind of ridiculous. What I wanted to do. some almost came from me. Others probably behind my back, you know. And then when I approach people kind of from you know working in film etc. Many people told me no directly.
[Niklas]: Erika received very mixed reactions to her idea of making a pornographic short film. And many shied away instantly from being part of creating explicit content. But the young director believed in her vision, no matter what anyone said.
[Erika]: Yeah well I I I guess I am a stubborn person.
[Erika]: I was also young and kind of you know not not afraid.
[Erika]: It's like I didn't have anything to lose really
[Erika]: You know it was just I have this idea. This is what I want to do. I think it could be cool. Let's do it. You know.
[Erika]: So I guess it's had to do with you know all that kind of energy. I've normally have an easy time of kind of getting people to come around together with me and just diving into something unknown.
[Niklas]: And eventually, as all the pieces for the short film were coming together, Erika knew that she needed to find the right actors for her film, or in this case - the performers.
[Erika]: The whole the whole process of finding performers, actors was really difficult because I didn't really know people from the adult industry. And actually it's a whole story in itself because I kind of contacted at first an agency that works with performers and when I said I had a film and I wanted to shoot it and I needed a man and a woman they sent over an email you know with names and pictures to me and I said some of them might be interesting but I'm really gonna have to meet to meet them and to talk to them and to to kind of figure we're doing a you know a real casting to figure out who I want for these characters and then they said this is not how it works Erika ,you know. this industry it's not how it works. You don't talk to people. here you look at a picture and then you tell them you know how much at what time and where. And that didn't feel right to me at all.
[Erika]: I ultimately reached an actress.
[Erika]: And then I got her number I called her and it was it was actually a really fun conversation because she said Hey I'm really close to where you are. I could come by but listen I'm out with my grandma. So just tell me. Does your place like look you know. Do you have like a lot of porn pictures of stuff like that. Because my grandma doesn't know what I'm doing. So I not it's just you know a regular home come by and we have a chat. So my first chat with a porn performer was together with her grandma.
[Erika]: And she was fantastic.
[Erika]: And then she helped me to find the performer for my first film. So that's you know and that is something that I've seen during all my work that the best way of you know finding people and having them working together is asking them who they want to work with, because that's when you get people to work together who actually have good chemistry you know.
[Erika]: And if I'm making a film about people having great sex which is obviously you know that the idea of these films then I really I really need people who are into each other because if they are not you will see that on the film.
[Niklas]: “The Good Girl” was finally ready to start shooting. This also in great part thanks to the help of that handsome Argentinian boy from the red bar. Ever since that hot summer night, Erika and Pablo had become partners. Romantic partners, but throughout the creation of this explicit short film, they became strong business partners venturing together, hand in hand into the depths of the adult entertainment industry.
[Erika]: Today he's my husband. We have been together for 19 years. But he helped me to get a little financing to actually make this film. And I made it. And it became kind of a success in a way, you know.
[Niklas]: “The Good Girl” didn’t become a success right away. It took some time until this little film caught the attention of the masses.
[Erika]: Well the reality of it is that it lay around in my drawer for a year before something actually happened.
[Erika]: At the beginning it was just a film that I showed to some friends and everybody that saw it liked it. And. I tried to pitch it to a few to a few companies adult companies. They all gave me really positive feedback saying like hey Erica this is cool. This is a great film I love what you have done. But listen there's no market for this. What are you talking about. You know there's no market for women. Women are not interested in buying anything that has to do with sex. You know basically they told me you pay women for sex. That was it.
[Erika]: And I felt I felt so so sad and so kind of you know just oh my god what, what a horrible world we live in somehow you know where people have this this this vision that that that that there's no market for women. It just felt wrong.
[Niklas]: Again Erika had been confronted with people who didn’t share her vision of what pornography could be. And so she was left, having put all this energy into a film, that apparently nobody wanted to see.
[Erika]: And then I actually started a blog online like ErikaLust.com my little blog where I started to talk about sex you know about sex and film and porn and feminism and gender and all this. These things that I was thinking about. That was in my head at that time and. I published this short film for free on my blog and that's actually how everything started.
[Erika]: I can't really tell you how but it kind of got viral somehow and people started to watch it and they downloaded and I have in a few weeks I had had two millions of downloads and my you know people were just sending emails e-mails saying Hey Erika I love your film that's so great that's so different. When are you going to make more?
[Erika]: And I think that that was that was you know that this I know somehow to me that oh my god it's not only me. There are actually more people out there kind of craving this same kind of of. I didn't know I didn't have a name back then but indie porn you know independent porn somehow I would call it.
[Erika]: And that was when I sat down together with with my partner and we started to talk about the possibility of making more and maybe you know founding a production company and that's how lust you know lust films or Erika Lust films started.
[Niklas]: After the break, we’ll find out how Erika and Pablo turned a little short film and a blog into one of the most influential companies in the world.
[Niklas]: After the success of “The Good Girl”, Erika Lust Films went ahead, giving birth to another couple of short films and a documentary project, all winning international awards and being very well received by large community hungry for Erikas films. So hungry that the company needed to expand in order to keep up with the rising demand.
[Erika]: We realized that this is you know we need more we need more, more energy. we need more people. Otherwise it's not gonna work.
[Niklas]: And the world was also changing. Little by little.
[Erika]: So 2010 that was also the shift when the shift started from DVD and you know packages going out all the time to creating a platform online. And that was a huge challenge in itself because we don't come from technology.
[Erika]: And at the beginning just finding people being able to help us to build technology that could work for this was a huge challenge.
[Niklas]: As challenging as it was, creating an online platform was a great way of reaching people all over the globe, who were seeking alternative pornography.
[Erika]: So that platform we had back then was was was a very simple one...it's it's definitely part of the success that we have have had is the distribution. You know if we hadn't found a way to distribute our own content we would not be where we are today.
[Niklas]: But the uncontrollable growth of the internet also came with its downside, making piracy spread like wildfire. But having her films stolen and passed around the web for free was not the thing that infuriated Erika. Her rage was due to something completely different.
[Erika]: Of course my films are being pirated. What what what makes me really mad about it. It's the way they are pirating it because they are changing. They are changing all all the names and all the titles. You know I make a film with a beautiful title for example and they then they put it on their sites and they change it and they put big breasted blonde fucked by you know two BBC or whatever. You know it's it's offensive the way they are doing it. So that's that's. I'm I'm I'm not happy about that at all.
[Erika]: And then I get extremely upset and very frustrated because when I see things like you know tiny teen getting destroyed for me that is opposite of of you know erotic, of sexy, of it. It's just wrong completely completely wrong.
[Erika]: I believe that that most of that porn that's out there, that it's showing a depressing vision of human sexuality and that. I mean we can do it so much better really.
[Erika]: And then for me what is also very important at this moment in life probably also because I am a mother and I have two girls. You know it's young people and how they grow up around all this pornography because obviously when I grew up you know to to get to watch porn was difficult. You know you kind of needed to find that tape somewhere you know someone needed to have it.
[Erika]: And today young people are getting fed from a very early age with with with sexually explicit images. And many of them showing you know things that are just not just not representing a healthy sexuality somehow.
[Erika]; And for me it's so important we started a project online called the porn conversation dot org. It's a nonprofit Project it's just you know information for parents and for for educators to go online and to see kind of how can you approach the subject. How can you actually talk to young people about porn and sex
[Niklas]: Ever since she saw that first adult videocassette, Erika needed to show the world that there’s another way of making porn, portraying a healthy sexual relationship on screen. Something completely different than what the mainstream had been producing.
[Erika]: In the porn industry when you talk to people they are talking about some of their film not not they are not using the word filmmakers. They are using the word kind of shooters you know people who know how to operate a camera but they don't they don't really have a vision you know. And most of the porn that is produced today. Is not produced with an artistic you know idea and artistic value is behind.
[Erika]: I mean when we are doing a film we do that work the same way as we would do if it would be any independent film you know from from that idea at developing the script developing storyboards talking to you know an art director about how are we actually gonna gonna show this, finding interesting locations. We don't ask that the performers only to you know to come with their suitcase under stand. You know a large area that they are using mostly for it for so many of the points you know we do all the work together as a crew with the whole concept developed and I think that that is something definitely that is not done in you know them the mainstream porn world today.
[Erika]: Most of the people working on my film crews comes from you know from film from advertisement from television from fashion photography you know from other industries. Partly because I want that kind of fresh look on this subject. I don't want them to you know to do what the industry has done for so long.
[Niklas]: For Erika it’s very simple. If you want to tell stories and create erortic imagery that speaks to women, that turns women on, you need to have women behind the cameras.
[Erika]: I think that when you start talking about. About trying to find a label or how do you call this how do you communicate to people etc. You bring up feminism and I am aware that some people call it feminist porn
[Erika]: Beause when you say for example feminist porn this a of people not understanding at all what you are talking about because they think that in feminism there’s something anti male and that there is in porn of being on the female and they can't make them go together or they imagine you know they imagine this kind of of of idea of ugly women with hair undertheir arms with the strap-ons put on ready to go out and fuck the men of the world in their ass
[Erika]: You know they they kind of think that that's the idea of a feminist porn and I mean if we talk about feminist porn for me it's very clear that I am talking about representation and participation.
[Erika]: Having women involved in the in the making of you know in the decision decision making part having women behind the cameras having women in production in you know as DOP. as camera operators in sound in you know editing in script writing in art design you know in the whole process because I think that is really how we can make the “female gaze” come through in in these films.
[Niklas]: After dozens of films, awards and various online platforms, Erika has been named one of the 100 most inspiring and influential women of 2019 by the BBC. Without a doubt she’s had a huge influence in the world.
[Erika]: And I think that also have had an effect on adult content…
[Erika]: I think it is happening
[Erika]: A year ago was the first time I kind of you know got closer I started to get to know some of the players and especially some of the you know industry people more like producers performers etc.. And I think that I think that they are really accepting me and they are really understanding what I'm doing and and that what we are doing is maybe in a little more kind of organic way more like an organic or family restaurant than McDonald's. You know this is not we are not like that. The factory of sausages.
[Erika]: This is more like let's see how we're gonna do this recipe. Then who are we going to count with and where can we find the best ingredients and you know that's our style.
[Erika]: But I see a shift in general in the industry and the need of starting to making things with more values and better working conditions for everyone involved that is happening and maybe I've been at least you know a little little influence for some people.
[Erika]: It all connects to kind of a bigger mission that I already had as a young person you know studying political science wanting to do something good in the world.
[Niklas]: Erika has accomplished a lot working in a world as obscure as the adult entertainment industry. And in spite of the challenges that come with working in porn, she’s always felt comfortable and extremely motivated to keep on pushing.
[Pablo]: She is succeeding with something she believes in. And that she that voice like her and other women were necessary and we're making a very profitable interesting business with that. So she her passion comes from the fact that she succeeded with a company that at the same time is doing something good. It's a match that I think that is what creates for energy and her passion because this doesn't happen like that all the time.
[Erika]: But but I think it also has to do with feeling proud of who you are and what you do somehow I think my energy also comes from me feeling very very proud and very happy with what I'm working with.
[Niklas]: And so, the beautiful Swedish girl and the handsome Argentinian boy created their little shop and have been a happy partners ever since that day in that red bar.
[Pablo]: I don't know. we've been together for 20 years. I'm the father of her two daughters are we are still super in love and engaged into each other.
[Pablo]: She's a mother of twelve year old and nine year old and she's really good at it.
[Niklas]: They have created a family of their own, and a family of filmmakers, all believing that pornography can be a wonderful medium, telling stories about the very thing that makes us exist.
[Erika]: We kind of need to get rid of this stigma we have around sex and especially around porn and start kind of accepting that you know porn can be so many things porn can be misogynistic and racist and horrible and disgusting. But at the sametime porn can be amazing and beautiful and fantastic and empowering. It all depends on you know on on on and on the values that the creators have of making what they are making.