Jennifer Lyon Bell's 'Adorn' Wins Sexology’s 'Sex & Media Prize'

Every year, the NVVS (Nederlandse Wetenschappelijke Vereniging voor Seksuologie) awards its Sex & Media Prize to a media item (article, book, documentary) that the NVVS feels has had the most positive effect on public attitudes about sexuality—and on Friday, November 29, 2019, it awarded that prize to Jennifer Lyon Bell’s sexually explicit film Adorn. Adorn is now the first porn film in history to win this prize.  The jury stated onstage at the awards ceremony, “We felt Adorn was innovative, interesting, and informative, with just the right dose of realistic messages about sex. The key elements that most of this year’s submissions hoped to convey are right here in the winning film: The importance of touch, and that sex is so much more than just arousing the genitals.” Later they also stated, amusingly, “Adorn was, above all, not only the best submission, but also the hottest.” Adorn chronicles a 100% improvised “erotic game” designed by Bell. “With Adorn, I wanted to make a film that captures something I think is very important about sex: The emotional presence of two people trying to discover together what will make them mutually happy," Bell explained. "My idea was to do this with the constraints of an unusual erotic game. Adorn would start with both performers naked, and have one rule: ‘You are only allowed to touch the other person over or under clothing that you put on them.’ So the actors couldn’t rely on the ‘typical’ order of sex acts, because it wasn’t allowed! They would need to get creative. I’m so happy that it worked: They really listened to one another, they did things together sexually that I have honestly never seen before, and the trust between them created more emotion than I could have anticipated. It’s funny and rough and loving. I am very proud of what we made out of their experience." Accepting the award, she thanked the crew, the stars Sadie Lune and Parker Marx, and addressed the audience of sexologists: “For those of you perplexed as to why a porn film is winning a sexology award, I understand.” Bell then contextualized porn within the importance of lifelong sex education. “There will never be a substitute for what I know many of you are working towards: A thorough and useful sexual education for not just young people, but people of all ages. That is extremely important. It is wrong and unfair that the entertainment we call porn should be forced to fill that role by itself.  But while we are working on creating that better world of sex education, I hope that we can create a better cultural dialogue around understanding porn, by allowing that looking at sex via film can be pleasurable for people, and that pleasure can be fundamentally good. Maybe we call it 'porn,' maybe we call it 'erotic film,' maybe it is mixed with art—or maybe it is not. But let us critique based on the facts and the realities, not on labels and prejudice.” The full text of her speech is available here. Adorn is exclusively available on the Blue Artichoke Films platform, with a choice of streaming or download. Since its launch, Adorn has screened at a dozen international film festivals, from erotic film festivals to short film festivals to underground festivals to dance film festivals. In Amsterdam, it will first screen at the EYE Filmmuseum in March 2020 as an official selection of the Cinedans Film Festival. Bell, based in Amsterdam, is the founder and creative director of Blue Artichoke Films, which creates “Erotic Film For People Who Like Film.” Bell directs, writes, and produces all of their movies. She is an American from San Francisco and has lived in Amsterdam for two decades. Her films include fiction, documentary, and experimental films, and reviewers have called them by various terms: “Explicit erotic film,” “feminist porn,” “alternative porn,” and “ethical porn.” She also teaches Erotic Cinema at the Dutch Film Academy and runs a popular erotic filmmaking workshop “From Fantasy To Film: Design Your Own Erotic Movie” which she will teach at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in March 2020. The NVVS has only ever nominated one other porn film to win the Sex & Media Prize: Silver Shoes (2014), also directed/written/produced by Jennifer Lyon Bell for Blue Artichoke Films. For full information about Adorn, with pictures and NSFW trailer, click here. The mission of Blue Artichoke Films can be found here.