Marriage 2.0 is a genre bending and groundbreaking cinematic piece that openly invites audiences to experience adult while still getting all the narrative and visual beauty you’d see in an indie film. The film, written by Magnus Sullivan, the creative mastermind behind LionReach Productions, and directed by Paul Deeb, who co-owns Pillow Book Productions, is being honored for all these aspects and many more with a nomination for an award at the prestigious Feminist Porn Awards.
According to the ceremony’s press release, Marriage 2.0’s nomination is based on its sex positivity and its myriad of strong female characters. As a piece of indie cinema it’s unique in its goal of casting ambiguity over the issues of sex and sexuality, showing these things as explorative and overall subject to personal choice. It’s an incredibly empowering film, and explores the positive aspects of sex without the tragic themes that often accompany sex in cinema.
“Marriage 2.0 is a deeply sex-positive film, with diverse relationships and sex-styles integral to the plot,” commented author and sex educator, and one of the film’s stars, Carol Queen. “Strongly-drawn women (and everybody else) make this one erotic film that people can not only relate to, but learn from. It proves that porn can be a genre that can really make a difference.”
On receiving the nomination, writer and creator Sullivan said, “We feel we’ve created a new kind of film, which melds the worlds of adult films with independent filmmaking that tests the definition of mainstream cinema.” As both Sullivan and Deeb said in a recent interview with BaDoink, the sex in the film is used as a narrative device, and shot and treated accordingly.
Marriage was produced by Sullivan’s company LionReach and can be streamed and enjoyed via their page on Adam & Eve, the adult product behemoth founded in 1971, as well as the film’s distributor. LionReach Productions endeavors to delightfully challenge the ways sex and relationships are explored in cinema, and is Sullivan’s vehicle for narratively showing how important it is to constantly grow and change in what he calls a “relationship revolution.”
Marriage 2.0’s nomination is a step in the right direction for adult cinema, as it’s a recognition of how sex should be portrayed in a positive, explorative, and subjective light. It’s a hardcore indie piece that leaves audiences fervently discussing for days and days after the final shots. Hopefully, more films of this type are to come, and as Deeb said in our conversation a few weeks ago, there’s an infinite amount one can do when coupling hardcore sex and imaginative filmmaking. If Marriage continues to enjoy its current success, Sullivan and Deeb will likely create even more compelling and challenging films.
This year makes the tenth anniversary of the Feminist Porn Awards, a venture produced by the adult retailer Good For Her, which is based in Toronto and offers a wide range of sophisticated and sexy products and educational programs on sex and pleasure. Good For Her’s been around since 1997, and for ten years has proudly been the producer of the Awards, which is the biggest and longest running feminist porn awards event across the entire globe.
The Feminist Porn Awards will take place in Toronto April 15-17. More information is available on the web, as well as on Good For Her’s site.
