Shine Louise Houston
Shine Louise Houston is a filmmaker and the founding director and producer of Pink and White Productions, an independent production company creating queer pornography in San Francisco.[1][2] Houston makes feature-length pornographic films in addition to producing, directing, and shooting hundreds of installments for her queer porn membership site CrashPadSeries.com.[2] Houston distributes her own work and that of other indie adult filmmakers through PinkLabel.tv, catering to different sexual communities.[2]
Shine Louise Houston | |
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Alma mater | San Francisco Art Institute |
Occupation | Film director, producer, cinematographer, performer |
Website | Official website |
Significance
Shine Louise Houston's films have screened at film festivals around the world. Houston speaks widely on issues of representation and sexual freedom of expression.[3] She is heavily involved with the feminist and queer art community as well as doing sexual health work and sex worker activism.[1][3] In her work, Houston features a diverse range of ethnicities, body types, non-conforming genders, and sexual identities [4][1] Houston has been written about widely in numerous publications on the intersections of race, pornography, and desire. Ariane Cruz, a professor of women's studies at Penn State, writes in her book, The Color of Kink,
[Houston's] films showcase stunning cinematography, inventive narratives, and incredibly diverse performers with respect to race, gender, and body. Houston's work critically queers representations of black [women's] sexual desire, offering modes of pleasure outside hegemonic, heteronormative representations of black female sexuality in pornography.[2]
Critics have stated that Houston's work counters inauthentic representations of women, trans, gender nonconforming, and queer folks of color's sexuality and desire in mainstream porn.[5] They also feel that Houston incorporates her own pleasure and desire as a black women into her pornography acting as a self-aware voyeur and camera operator.[1][5]
Education
Houston received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Film from the San Francisco Art Institute.[2]
Career
After graduating, Houston worked at a Good Vibrations sex shop in the San Francisco Bay area for five years.[3] While at Good Vibrations, Houston found an underserved need for queer-made pornography when customers asked for recommendations on the search for representation of their own sexual communities.[1] Community demand inspired Houston to band together with friends to make their own queer pornography.[5] Houston founded Pink and White Productions and in 2008 launched the queer pornography distribution site CrashPadSeries.com.[1] The company's first queer porn feature, Crash Pad, starring Jiz Lee, establishes the location of all the subsequent CrashPadSeries episodes.[1] The Crash Pad is an apartment located in San Francisco dedicated to mutual pleasure based queer sex and Houston acts as Key Keeper to the Crash Pad.[5] Houston incorporates into the scene her presence behind the camera via her own kink, and participation, as a voyeur.[1] In the feature SuperFreak she stars as the ghost of Rick James.[4] The ghost possesses people on a mission to turn the whole world into SuperFreaks having great sex.[2] All models in Pink and White Productions videos seek them out, and Houston organizes scenes around the model's personal fantasies.[2] CrashPadSeries.com debuts episodic, reality-based queer pornography videos.[5] The site is set up like a blog, featuring photos and identity profiles of the stars to make visible the alternate gender identities and sexualities represented in their videos.[1] As of 2017, Houston is in post-production for their next feature, Snapshot, a horror film dedicated to complicating the limited "coming out" narrative predominantly featured in mainstream media.[6]
Awards and honors
- CineKink Choice Award for Best Narrative Feature" SNAPSHOT, 2017 Cinekink New York City [7]
- Movie of the Year" SNAPSHOT, 2017 Toronto International Porn Festival [8]
- Selected, BFI FLARE LGBT Film Festival London, SNAPSHOT [9]
- "Audience Winner" CrashPad's Guide to Fisting, La Fete du Slip
- "Best Orgasm" 2015 BRIEFS Erotic Short Film Competition CrashPad Romp Comp
- "Best Porn Studio" 2014 Best of the Bay, San Francisco Bay Guardian,
- Bed Party: Eden Alexander and Sebastian Keys – 2015 XBIZ Awards Nominated "Feminist Porn Release of the Year"
- CrashPadSeries.com – 2015 XBIZ Awards Nominated "Alternative Site of the Year"
- CrashPadSeries.com – 2015 AVN Awards Nominated "Specialty Site of the Year"
- Bed Party: Eden Alexander and Sebastian Keys – 2014 Feminist Porn Awards "Best Boygasm"
- Occupied: a queer hardcore romance for the 99% – 2014 XBIZ Awards "Feminist Porn Release of the Year"
- CrashPadSeries.com – 2014 XBIZ Awards "Specialty Site of the Year"
- PinkLabel.tv – 2014 XBIZ Nominated "Specialty Site of the Year"
- CrashPadSeries.com – 2014 TrannyAwards Nominated "Best Sex Scene"
- CrashPadSeries.com – 2011-2014 AVN Awards Nominated "Best Alternative Site"
- CrashPadSeries.com – 2012 Feminist Porn Awards Best Website
- HeavenlySpire.com – 2011 Feminist Porn Awards Best Website
- Crash Pad Series Volume 6 – Nominated 2011 Feminist Porn Awards
- "Audience Choice Award" 2010 Feminist Porn Awards – Crash Pad Series Volume 5 (Shawn & Mickey Mod)
- "Movie of the Year" 2009 Feminist Porn Awards – Champion: Love Hurts
- "Best Video Feature" Nomination 2010 AVN Awards – Champion: Love Hurts
- "Steamiest Trans Sex Scene" 2000 Feminist Porn Awards – Crash Pad Series Volume 2 (Julie & Michelle Aston)
- "Best Dyke Sex Film" 2008 Feminist Porn Awards – Crash Pad Series Volume 1
- "Best Trans Sex Scene" 2007 Feminist Porn Awards – The Wild Search (Papi Cox & Will Thrustwell)
- "Best Dyke Sex Scene" 2007 Feminist Porn Awards – Superfreak (Lorelei Lee, Princess Donna & Dana DeArmond)
- "Best Dyke Sex Scene" 2006 Feminist Porn Awards – The Crash Pad (Jiz Lee & Shawn)
- Selected, Outfest 2006, the 26th Annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
- Selected, 18th Annual Vancouver Queer Film Fest
- Selected, Cineffable 2006, Paris
- Vixens + Visionaries Independent Porn Awards – "Best Dyke Sex Scene" The Crash Pad[3]
Featured publications
- A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography by Mireille Miller-Young
- Black Female Sexualities edited by Trimiko Melancon
- Freeing Ourselves: A guide to Health and Self Love for Brown Bois by The Brown Boi Project
- Porn After Porn, "Mighty Real," Shine Louise Houston, Sept 2014 (Reprinted with Permission in XBIZ Fall 2014 Issue)
- Porn for Pussies: Representations of Queer Female Sexuality in Shine Louise Houston's Pornography by Engel Nicole, Presented at the National Women's Studies Association
Influences
References
- Seise, Cherie (April 2010). "Fucking Utopia: Queer Porn and Queer Liberation". Sprinkle: A Journal of Sexual Diversity Studies. 3: 154.
- Cruz, Ariane (2016). The Color of Kink: Black Women, BDSM, and Pornography. NYU Press.
- "Shine Louise Houston". Crash Pad Series.
- Miller-Young, Mireille (2014). A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography. Duke University Press.
- Taormino, Tristan; Penley, Constance; Shimizu, Celine; Miller-Young, Mireille, eds. (2013). The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure. The Feminist Press.
- Wysinger, Caroline (June 26, 2015). "Support SNAPSHOT: Queer Women Of Color Making Sexy Porn". Autostraddle.
- "Winners Of CineKink's 14th Annual Kinky Film Festival Announced". AVN.
- "Buy cinema tickets for Sexit Screenings: Enactone + Snapshot | BFI Flare: London LGBT Film Festival". whatson.bfi.org.uk.
- Hall, Chris. "Shine Louise Houston: What if Hitchcock, Jarmusch, and Metzger Made Porn Films?". SF Weekly.