Empathy In Design: Supporting Ethical Porn Values Throughout Distribution
Sex is a giant, beautiful, strange, messy, fascinating, fun, and thrilling force of nature. When I make movies for Blue Artichoke Films, I embrace the quirky, sometimes awkward feelings that are the engine of our human sexual experience.
How can we demonstrate the value of this kind of empathetic porn in a world where mountains of porn are free?
My ideas about intimacy, fun, and comfort inform my film content, my design of the Blue Artichoke Films platform’s user experience, and my personal vision of sex-positive community that uses the platform’s technology to combine real-life and virtual experiences.
Jennifer Lyon Bell is the Harvard-educated American founder of independent adult cinema company Blue Artichoke Films in Amsterdam, NL. She directs erotic fiction films, documentaries, and Virtual Reality films which bridge the divide between adult film and art film. No matter the form, her award-winning films show sexuality in an emotionally realistic way. They screen at international festivals, cinemas, and museums in America, Europe, Japan, and South America, attracting prizes from a wide audience: Mainstream art film festivals, adult film festivals, and sexology institutions alike.
Jennifer also evangelizes for more interesting, creative, and realistic sexual representation. She teaches and lectures about erotic cinema and sex scene film technique, at film schools and universities For film professionals and regular folks alike, she offers her self-empowering creative workshop “From Fantasy To Film: Design Your Own Erotic Film” which she teaches internationally both live and on TV. She consults for scriptwriters and production teams of movies and TV shows to assist with adapting sexuality to the screen. Lastly, Jennifer highlights her favorite examples of diverse and creative filmic sexuality by curating exciting erotic-themed film programs and exhibitions for museums, film festivals and arts institutions. Her own film work has appeared in SXSW/Playboy/Vice/Dazed/BBC/Filmmaker/Buzzfeed/Broadly/Arté and more.
You can find her work on www.blueartichokefilms.com or follow her on
Instagram (@jenniferlyonbell), Twitter (@jenniferlyonb), Facebook (@blueartichokefilms) or LinkedIn (@jenniferlyonbell)
15% off on all movies at the Blue Artichoke Films platform through September