New Film ‘Sweat’ Coming From Noel Alejandro

BARCELONA—The newest film from alternative gay adult filmmaker Noel Alejandro is set for a May 25 release. Sweat is the 10th film from Alejandro, an independent and alternative adult film director based in Berlin and Barcelona. Sweat stars Jesse Charif and Parker Marx as two acquaintances who encounter each other at a firmer friend’s apartment and begin a conversation. The awkward conversation turns into sharing a cup of tea and then a physical encounter that is at times uncomfortable and sensual. Noel’s career in cinema dates back to 2008, when he studied film and television in Barcelona. But it wasn’t until 2012 that he decided to focus his abilities in remodeling pornography. It was while working with internationally known feminist erotic filmmaker Erika Lust that Noel began to see pornography as a tool to question society’s standards and misconceptions. It wouldn’t take long until Noel realized that gay erotica has also been deeply stigmatized, and decided to represent his own interpretation of sexuality on screen. “Throughout my years in the university, I would apply what I was learning about scripts, characters, and filmmaking into everything I liked: music, video clips, arts, literature, and of course, cinema projects,” he writes on his blog. “At that time my relationship with porn was pretty normal and I had never thought of it in a complex way. I just remember seeing sex and thinking, ‘I wish I could see the sex as part of the story in regular films, as well. That would be nice.’ “When thinking about porn, most people think of something dirty or to make fun of,” he continued. “Pornography is often the taboo that people tend to associate with the wrong, the forbidden, the undignified. But even if that’s the case for a type of pornography, it doesn’t define eroticism and for sure doesn’t limit the horizons of pornography. Making pleasant things with sex, and finding human beauty on places people would not see it feels deeply satisfying for me. It’s my favorite form of intellectual pleasure.” A trailer for Sweat will be available on May 23 on Vimeo.com. For more, visit NoelAlejandroFilms.com.