Team & History
AORTA films Champions queer & trans indie porn
to create a future of ethical fuckery.
We believe that pornography is capable of achieving the cultural relevance, political impact, and formal artistry equal to any other form. As queer and trans people, we know that both sexuality and pornography have always been–and will always be–political. We see pornography as an essential tool for documenting queer resistance and survival, providing preemptive community care through life-affirming pleasure, and naming that pleasure as an inalienable human right.
Our porn champions the reclaimed desires of people who have been told they are somehow wrong, sending cultural fault lines out into the world to disrupt it for the better. We create visionary explicit short films, features, and programming in partnership with our diverse range of collaborators, centering individuals who hold under- and miss-represented identities and bodies in mainstream porn. But it’s not just about our films. To achieve our mission of advancing the future of porn, we are dedicated to building the indie porn ecology through mutuality and collaboration, developing opportunities to curate, celebrate, and incubate the work of other creators in our field, exploring the future of porn together as a thriving creative community.
AORTA films celebrates the radical, transformative joy of so-called obscenity,
in pursuit of porn’s liberatory future.
Led by Creative Director Mahx Capacity, AORTA films produces award-winning short films & long-term feature projects, as well as a range of innovative programming including a queer clips library, a a bi-annual film festival, featured guest artist collaborations, screenings, workshops, and commercial collaborations.
AORTA’s films center performers across a wide range of bodies and identities. Hailing from queer BDSM community and experimental performance contexts, the studio works collaboratively, prioritizing safe and enthusiastically consensual working processes. They’re obsessed with creating hot, kinky content that celebrates queer identity and explodes with destabilizing pleasure.
AORTA films IS…
Queer & Trans Led
We are proudly queer and trans owned and operated. We engender credibility through authenticity as we feature work made for and by a broad range of identities, bodies, kinks, and sexualities.
Powerfully Obscene
We believe in pornography’s potential as a liberatory space of exploration and autonomy. We use it to disrupt and enliven calcified, unjust structures around us.
Resisting the Gentrification of Pleasure
We do not align with ways that “ethical porn” branding attempts to create distance from the Adult Industry and rebrand/emigrate to the “Pleasure & Wellness “ Industry.
We make porn–not art, not erotica, not wellness, not education; we are sex workers laboring within the adult industry who call for the decriminalization of sex work and ethical working conditions. We resist the girlbossification of sex work, and work with awareness of how increased visibility without protection is a path to harm.
We PRACTICE…
Rigorous Care & Wild Freedom
We practice rigorous safety and care, creating spaces where consensual risk taking (or R.A.C.K.–”risk aware consensual kink”) and pleasure can explore within the full range of human capacity. We believe creative freedom and individual autonomy are made possible by a practice of deep accountability.
A Cooperative Ethos
We hold complexity and multiplicity as a strength. We commit to addressing barriers to participation in our field, and to continually expanding AORTA’s community of power-holders and decision-makers.
Fierce Experimentalism
We reach towards the not-yet-existing, valuing exploration and discovery over the repetition of what’s already known. We rely on embodied knowledge and original creative vision to create and incubate emergent works and strategies towards innovation.
LET’S TALK ABOUT PORN
Mainstream pornography deprioritizes both the conditions of its labor and the quality of its final product to maximize financial gain. The industry extracts labor from its performers, and produces content that distances many of us from our bodies and identities–it alienates us from our pleasure rather than making us feel more alive.
Simultaneously, new porn startups seek to invent “better porn” by emigrating out of the adult industry and rebranding as “pleasure and wellness”–using the strategy of “healthful sexuality” to distance their brands from the stigma that sex work and pornography hold as exploitative, immoral, and devoid of value.
Pornography is not a lost cause–we are just in the absolute infancy of what it can become as a form.
Tethering our sexual fulfillment to these mainstream and indie companies and pursuing profit over all else is a strategy with bleak and diminishing returns. What might be possible once we untether porn from extractive profit, and re-envision it as a practice of community care, meaning making, and collective liberation?
Pornography creates impact through intimacy: it can upend our world for the better, and play an essential role in liberating us from calcified, unjust systems. It can carry cultural relevance and formal artistry equal to any other form. And it can keep queer and trans people alive by offering pre-emptive care–reminding us that we are not alone, and instead seen, celebrated, and deeply deserving of joy exactly the way we are. From the space made by our predecessors in the early days of feminist porn in the 1980’s, new ecologies of queer and indie porn have evolved, carrying the potential to imbue the Adult Industry with mainstream cultural relevance–no longer as a taboo, but as a ubiquitous carrier of culture.
History
AORTA films was conceived in 2015 by co-founders Mahx Capacity, Ginny Woolf, and Parts Authority. The three co-founders shared a creative practice starting in 2012, when Parts proposed the idea of a Valentine’s Day photoshoot in celebration of their friendship, bodies, and babeliness. The photoshoot became an annual tradition, growing each year in scope and participants.
In 2015, the team was invited to collaborate on the A.O. Movement Collective’s ETLE Universe project, and Mahx conceived of and directed the first collection of shorts, The OH Files, which featured Ginny and Parts among the performers. Following the premiere of The OH Files in March of 2015, the three founders launched AORTA films in October 2015.
Parts, Ginny, and Mahx developed AORTA films together for four years until 2019, when Parts and Ginny departed from AORTA films to pursue other interests. Papi Femme–who had worked with AORTA as a performer, costume consultant, and chef–joined the AORTA team, initially as the studio’s Communications Manager, and then as AORTA’s co-producer with Mahx. The team has since expanded to include Ginger Hollander (social media manager), Kriss Lowerance (Web Developer), Anna Adams Stark (Bookkeeper), Avery Jaye (Studio Manager), and continues to grow.
AORTA’s work has been presented at screenings, galleries, festivals, and museums, across the USA, Canada, South America, and Europe, including the Berlin, London, Vienna, and Athens Porn Film Festivals, Hacker Porn Film Festival (Rome), POP PORN (Brazil), Excéntrico Fest (Chile), MIX Copenhagen, International Queer and Migrant Film Festival (Amsterdam), Berlin Feminist Film Week, Hot Bits (Philly), SECS Fest (Seattle), BRIEFS (Oakland), EVERYBOOTY at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (NYC), Kink Out at MoMa PS1 (NYC), and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London). Their films have been commissioned by The Invisible Dog Art Center, and supported by a grant from the Effing Foundation for Sex-Positivity.
In 2018, AORTA films won awards for short films Solo/Duo (“Most Likely to Make You Want To Fuck”) and Digital Genitals (Jury Award) at BRIEFS in Oakland, and Best International Short Film for Full at the Hacker Porn Film Festival. In 2019, AORTA’s feature film (W/HOLE) was honored with Best Feature Film at Hacker Porn and Best Film – Fiction at the Vienna Porn Film Festival, in addition to being featured as the Opening Film at the Athens Porn Film Festival, Hacker Porn Film Festival, and the Schamlos! queer-feminist Pornfestival, and the Closing Film at the London Porn Film Festival. That same year, Fucking Loser was awarded Best Short at the Luststreifen Film Festival. In 2021, Hole Theory and Another Beautiful Creature both won Golden Raincoat Awards for Best Short and Best Docuporn respectively at SECS Fest in Seattle.
The Daily Dot has called AORTA films “a hidden gem” and Wear Your Voice has praised AORTA as “…sexy, fun, and cute as hell…art films of the nth degree…the sex I try to have as often as possible.” Vice’s i-D Magazine writes “The variety of content …is vast, showcasing a huge range of bodies, kinks and fantasies…It becomes a tool for breaking down harmful and sexist ways of thinking.” You can see more press AORTA has received here.
Want to write about our work or interview us?
Press inquiries can be directed to helloAORTA@AORTAfilms.com
Want to work with AORTA?
More info here.
Team
Mahx Capacity
Creative Director, Co-Producer
pronouns: they/them
Mahx Capacity is a queer, white, fat, trans/non-binary pervert and taurean pleasure prince. Hailing from a background in choreography and experimental performance, Mahx is interested in wielding queer porn as a tool for destabilizing pleasure, fierce vulnerability, and complex humanity. Their shorts and feature films have been screened at festivals all over the globe. In addition to running AORTA, Mahx has performed in films by Four Chambers, Meow Meow Collective, and AORTA films. They are a maximalist through and through, and they feel gleeful about getting to make porn as part of such a deeply brilliant community.
Mahx has received the honor of Best Film awards for four of their short films: Full (Hacker Porn Film Festival, 2018), Fucking Loser (Vienna Porn Film Festival, 2020), Hole Theory (SECS Fest, 2021), and Another Beautiful Creature (SECS Fest, 2021). Their first feature film (W/HOLE) was selected as the Opening/Closing film at four festivals, and won Best Film at the Vienna Porn Film Festival and Hacker Porn Film Festivals (2019).
Mahx has been featured as a speaker/panelist/educator by STRAND Bookstore, Consider This, Brooklyn College, First Person Plural Salon, Posture Magazine, the Hacker Porn Film Festival, Tristan Taormino’s “Sex Out Loud” and Tina Horne’s “Why are People Into That?” podcasts. You can find them in Brooklyn, daydreaming about the mouthfeel of skyscrapers, deepening their BDSM practice, and contemplating what strangers look like when they come. [Photo credit: Maria Baranova]
Papi Femme
Co-Producer, Community Hardcore Curator
pronouns: he/him
Papi Femme is a fat femme trans white Latinx leather Daddy and cultural worker. In addition to running his own fetishwear brand, he’s worked in many on- and off-screen capacities with AORTA films since 2018, including co-producing, directing, and managing AORTA’s socials and communications from 2020-2022. Papi’s performance credits include Crash Pad Series and AORTA’s feature film, (W/HOLE). His directorial debut, Luna Has Two Mommies, is an official selection of the Vienna Porn Film Festival. As part of his role as AORTA Co-Producer, Papi also curates AORTA’s new queer explicit content platform, Community Hardcore.
Ginger Hollander
Social MEdia Manager
pronouns: they/them
Ginger Hollander is famously obsessed with gay sex and Internet culture, so they’re just happy to be here! Ginger is Extremely Online and driven by their passion for communication and consent, pleasure and hydration, comprehensive sex education, and sex workers’ rights. They are a queer, non-binary photographer, sex educator, and insatiable bottom living, posting, and color-coordinating in NYC.
Alicia Ray
MARKETING CONSULTANT
pronouns: she/her
Meet Alicia Ray, a passionate and results-driven digital marketer, bringing her data analytics prowess to the world of film. Alicia is a force in the industry with a proven track record of driving exponential digital growth and revenue. Her innovative eCommerce strategies, backed by data-driven insights, have consistently yielded measurable results, solidifying her position as a leader in the field. Alicia’s ability to creatively problem solve and leverage data analytics ensures optimal performance and enhanced ROI, making her an invaluable asset to the AORTA Films team. In addition to her exceptional marketing skills, Alicia holds a unique certification in sextech, having completed an 8-week program with renowned expert Bryony Cole. This specialized knowledge allows her to explore the intersection of technology and intimacy, infusing her work with a distinct and forward-thinking perspective.
Alicia is deeply passionate about promoting wellness and the potential of sextech brands, striving to create impactful marketing initiatives that resonate with diverse audiences and bring education and pleasure to the masses. Her expertise in navigating complex landscapes and fostering stakeholder collaboration ensures that her digital marketing campaigns consistently deliver outstanding outcomes.As an advocate for underrepresented voices, she is dedicated to breaking barriers and crafting engaging narratives that leave a lasting impact on audiences worldwide.
ANNA ADAMS STARK
BOOKKEEPER
pronouns: she/her
Anna Adams Stark is a performer and arts worker based in NYC. As a performer she has worked with Kim Brandt, Walter Dundervill, Londs Reuter, Laurie Berg & Bessie McDonough-Theyer, the A.O. Movement Collective, Ivy Baldwin Dance, Levi Gonzalez, Tara Aisha Willis, among others. Anna was a founding producer of RoofTop Dance (2010-2013) and ROVE (2014). Anna worked at Dance New Amsterdam from 2009-2013 and Movement Research from 2014-2023.
Kriss Lowrance
pronouns: they/them
Kriss Lowrance has worked behind the scenes in the world of indie porn since 2009, as both a customer support specialist, designer, and principal architect behind large-scale web development projects. Kriss developed and maintains the systems that power CrashPadSeries.com and PinkLabel.tv, and helped vital community events like San Francisco PornFilmFestival survive the 2020 pandemic by live-streaming their screenings and panels to international audiences. An advocate for trans rights, sex work decriminalization, and ethical technology, Kriss led a workshop on adult web design and security at the Feminist Porn Conference at the University of Toronto, was published in the anthology Coming Out Like A Porn Star and the academic journal Porn Studies, and has been a panelist and speaker on numerous local community forums and events in their home state of North Carolina.
INARA TAYAO-LUCERO
Strategic Communications/PR Consultant
pronouns: she/they
Inara Tayao-Lucero is a queer strategic communications consultant with a focus on cannabis, psychedelics, adult entertainment, sextech, sex education and wellness; they are gender-fluid and of Filipino and Mexican descent.
As a medical cannabis patient and former sex worker, Tayao-Lucero started Inara Communications to shine a light on the communities they’re part of. They’ve become a fierce advocate for decolonizing, destigmatizing and decriminalizing alternative medicines and lifestyles. The intersectionality of Inara’s lived experience enables them to craft integrated campaigns through an empathetic and humanitarian lens. Taking the time to build trust, Inara provides guidance on macro and micro levels using solutions-driven and out-of-the-box strategies.
They have had proven success creating internal and external communications plans resulting in earned media placements (Them, Kinkly, Hustler Magazine, Music Connection), improved workflows, as well as garnered over $100,000 in revenue. When they’re not changing the world, Inara is usually over-indulging in cuddle time with their corgi/dachshund/chihuahua mixed pup, chasing the next adrenaline fix and living their best kinky life.