Pornhub is widening its portfolio, and its first-ever non-adult film is available to stream now.
The pornography website is the most popular of its kind in the world – in 2019, there were more than 42 billion visits to the site, averaging at 115 million visits every single day.
However, its ethos goes beyond the in-and-out, branching out into breast cancer awareness and environmental efforts. Now, it’s dropped its first feature-length documentary.
Grasshopper The documentary is titled Shakedown, coming from former Hood By Air CEO, conceptual artist and filmmaker Leilah Weinraub. Its ‘stream-of-consciousness’ narrative explores the early 2000s lesbian club scene in Los Angeles, focusing on the men and women who were there.
The film’s original online fundraiser explained:
The film is anchored in the stories of three women: Ronnie Ron, the creator and emcee of Shakedown, a large butch/stud lesbian and former Jehovah’s Witness; Egypt, a single mother, beauty pageant fanatic, and dedicated self-(re)inventor; and Jazmyne, the complicated and sometimes conflicted ‘Queen’ of Shakedown.
We go through the process of their labour with them and record what they do, and how they feel about what they are doing. From a meta-perspective, queer cultural production remains at the fringes of society today. It is largely undocumented, and therefore communities and art forms continuously disappear as stories are forgotten.
With footage assembled over the course of 15 years by Weinraub, critics called it a ‘nuanced, moving look at a haven of sexual freedom and expression, and raucous fun at the same time’.
GrasshopperPornhub acquired Shakedown (repped by distributor Grasshopper) after a series of screenings at exhibits at the Whitney Museum and MoMA over the past three years. Commenting on the film’s distribution, Weinraub told Variety: ‘There’s a cool opportunity right now to present films in the art space, there’s more openness to diversity and content, and a different sort of storytelling.’
Alex Klein, Pornhub’s brand director, added:
This film is part of a larger general commitment Pornhub has to supporting the arts. We want to be seen as a platform that artists and creators can use. We’ve seen artists in general upload content to the site, that might not have a home at places like YouTube or Vimeo, who don’t permit nudity. For us, premiering a feature length film is a first. We’re very excited about it.
Shakedown is available to stream on Pornhub for the entire month of March, before dropping on the Criterion Channel and eventually iTunes this summer. If you’d like to watch the film, click here (bear in mind it is a Pornhub link, but it’s safe for work).
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.