Queer porn studio AORTA Films is holding a crowdfunding campaign for new erotic horror film, HAUNTED.

When the resident of an apartment reports a haunting, a team of documentary filmmakers arrive ready to record the unquiet spirit—or debunk its existence. There’s Sam, the introvert who’s more interested in being behind the camera than in front of it; June, a grief-stricken skeptic who refuses to play nice; and Jane, the woo-woo ringleader of the crew who happens to share an ex with one of her co-workers. It’s a tense situation, made more so by the presence of a trickster spirit with a few mind-games up their sleeves. But no one is prepared for the gratification that comes from being held in the camera’s gaze, or letting down your defenses, or opening up for an adversary — and the intensely pleasurable revelations that will follow.

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 joins AORTA Films Creative Director Mahx Capacity in the first of the studio’s new Induction Series, a collaboration with visionary thinkers that seeks to “ignite larger conversations about the historic role of pornography as cultural instigator, media of merit, and art form of significance.”

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While the Kickstarter platform does not allow the funding of “pornographic” material, the team previously held a successful fundraiser for their “explicitly-embodied experimental film” project (W)hole, and hopes this new fundraiser will further demonstrate the unique challenges of censorship.

To do this, they have delicately balanced the rules of the platform’s TOS by fundraising specifically for a “non-explicit erotic horror film” while AORTA supplies the extended explicit cuts of the sex scenes. This clever dual approach allowed the campaign to be approved by Kickstarter, where it was also named one of the platform’s coveted “Projects We Love” which highlights the campaign and boosts its discoverability — well done!

“The biggest risk our work always faces is censorship. While we put a great deal of intention and focus into working within the ToS of each platform we use, each platform defines nudity, sexuality, and explicit content differently (and very often, not consistently, and not in favor of queer, non-normative content.) Moreover, since our work is unapologetically sex-positive, queer, fat-positive, anti-racist, and trans feminist, it occasionally offends people who don’t align with our values. We deal with challenges as they arise, and use each occasion as a chance to make our work stronger, more present, and more available.”

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