AORTA films and Carmen Maria Machado Unveil Kickstarter for “Haunted”
Crowdfunding campaign gives viewers a chance to be part of the creative process, and early access to the film.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 10, 2023
Contact: Inara Tayao-Lucero
inara@inara.agency
NEW YORK – AORTA films launched a Kickstarter campaign on October 10 for “Haunted” – the highly anticipated collaboration with queer author Carmen Maria Machado. Currently in the casting phase, “Haunted” tells the story of a team of documentary filmmakers investigating a ghost haunting and determined to record the unquiet spirit – or debunk its existence.
With a goal of $20k to support producing the short film, the creators aim to build a community to engage and interact with as the project develops. “Backer” reward levels include an early access digital download to “Haunted”, an opportunity to add your voice to the film’s sound design, an exclusive poster designed by trans, Bronx-based artist ggggrimes (Theodoor Grimes) as well as a limited edition chapbook featuring Machado’s in-process script.
“Stretch Goal” rewards will include alternate versions of the “Haunted” poster designed by Martha Hipley and WithaPencilinHand, a “Making of Haunted” behind-the-scenes mini-doc and a backer-only launch party for the film (hosted in New York City).
This marks the first project in AORTA films’ groundbreaking Induction Series, which invites brilliant thinkers, makers, and doers from adjacent fields into the queer porn underground. As honored guest collaborators, Inductees are asked to bring their unique and compelling understandings of sex, pleasure, identity and embodiment to the project.
Machado, known for her bestselling memoir “In the Dream House” and short stories “Her Body and Other Parties”, is welcomed as the inaugural featured artist in the series. For “Haunted”, AORTA films will adapt Machado’s script to create a collection of media, as well as extended pornographic cuts for each of the sex scenes.
The Induction Series is a platform for conversations around queer cinema’s history of entanglement with censorship, stigma, culture and sexual liberation. AORTA’s Creative Director Mahx Capacity describes the program’s intent: “We hope to expand the cultural understanding of what pornography can be, not just for queer people, but for everyone. In partnering with visionary artists, we’re engaging in intentional conversations around porn’s formal, artistic, and cultural capabilities – both internally within our creative process and externally with the public.”
The Kickstarter campaign will run until 11:59pm EST on November 9. For more information, visit https://tinyurl.com/AORTA-CMM-Kickstarter
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AORTA films is an internationally award-winning queer/trans indie porn studio creating explicit, experimental queer cinema: lusty, opulent, ethical fuckery. Led by Creative Director Mahx Capacity (they/them), AORTA films produces short films & long-term features, as well as innovative programming including a queer clip library, a semi-annual film festival, and workshops. The studio is best known for their work creating innovative, cinematic, sex-positive porn featuring performers across a diverse range of identities, bodies, and genders. AORTA’s first feature “(W/HOLE)” won Best Film at the Vienna Porn Film Festival and Hacker Porn Film Festival in 2019, and six of their short films have won Best Short at festivals around the world.
Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, among many others. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.”