“Sluts on screen” is an independent film exhibition that aims to support the fight against stigma, discrimination, and other forms of violence experienced by sex workers. Through the programming of films produced by sex workers or that focus on the audiovisual representation of their stories, experiences, and political-affective narratives in first person, the exhibition aims to provide a window into the complexity and diversity of sex work, bringing together works from multiple territories with heterogeneous narratives and styles.

Currently more and more sex workers are taking the camera to tell their own stories, creating unique pieces autonomously and with the collaboration of other sex workers and allies. This allows us to have audiovisual works that offer an alternative to the dominant narratives of sex work, subverting stereotypes and victimizing, moralistic, and rescuer perspectives around this practice. Cinema can be a way to condition our perspective on things, and the representations with greater circulation about sex work often fall into commonplaces. In response to this, this exhibition seeks to unleash our eyes in order to build other visions on sex work guided by its own protagonists.

The exhibition originated in 2022 with a curation focused on representations of sex work carried out by María Riot for the 3rd edition of the Excéntrico Festival in Chile. Later on, the exhibition continued to develop independently and collaboratively thanks to the curatorial work of María Riot, Ornella Bodratto, and Nicola Ríos. At present, the exhibition seeks to become a pedagogical tool and a trench in the fight against prohibitionist and criminalizing legislative initiatives regarding sex work that have taken place in Spain, country where the curatorial team currently lives.

Today and for the first time, we bring the exhibition to Poland, with a selection of 5 short films entirely produced outside of Europe. Unique pieces that offer different angles of approach to sex work, showing its complexity and the various languages that can be adopted to narrate stories about one of the oldest professions in the world. We are happy to have received this invitation from the Post Porn Arts Fest and to have the opportunity to present this selection in Warsaw, thanks to the contribution and collaboration of the filmmakers and performers involved in the program. Although it may seem obvious to say, the relationship between pornographic arts and sex work is undeniable. If we can talk about post-porn today, it is thanks to porn, and if porn exists, it is thanks to sex work. And the struggles for the recognition of both – porn and sex work – are at the center of the sexual politics that drives this exhibition and are under attack in different parts of the world, whether by moral panics, conservatism, or the rescuer ideology of white, eurocentric, and colonial feminisms.

We invite you to approach and watch the selected short films, made with the sensitivity that only those who engage in sex work can offer when constructing images of themselves. #sexworkiswork!