I can't remember how I came to discover Calamity Amelie, but I reckon my mate, Emma, had something to do with it. You see, Emma and Amelie are both Swedish and feminists, so if someone was to recommend a Swedish feminist porn star to me, it'd probably be Emma. I do remember, however, being so impressed by Amelie's Indiegogo campaign 6 months ago, that I donated €10 without having seen any of her previous films. All she had up was a short, adorable trailer that was of better quality than any porn I've seen. Nods to vintage and porno kitsch are really well presented and executed. Sadly though, Indiegogo cancelled her campaign (shaking my fists in their general direction), but she's back with a crowd-sourcing site specifically for adult projects, Offbeatr. And you can help bring this former film school student's erotic feature to life by donating a few quid.

Amelie's mission is a simple one: bring feminism and adult films together in quality packaging. She believes that people shouldn't be ashamed of the porn they watch. They should be delighted by it, and they should have more choice in the kind of porn that's available. I really like the idea of using crowd-sourcing to fund porn. It allows more choice to the viewer in an industry that has, till the advent of high speed internet, chosen for us. Helping to produce a feature can also make us feel more involved in the porn that we watch, which in a way makes the whole experience all the more hot. It's been a relatively slow build over the past 5 years or so, but independent female pornographers are starting to pick up steam with more and more women discovering feminist porn and sharing it with their friends and/or partners. I've mentioned American names before like Tristan Taormino and Courtney Trouble, but this is the first really impressive European filmmaker I've found so far. If you, like me, wish to see more independent pornographers (and in particular Calamity Amelie) pick up their cameras and start contributing better films to the pornsphere, I would highly recommend pitching in a few bob to this project. And if that doesn't convince you, here's one more photo.