Mia Engberg’s film series, Dirty Diaries premiered tonight in the Swedish capital of Stockholm and has sparked controversy with regard to its public funding. The collection of erotica received the equivalent of US $69 000 in financial support from the Swedish Film Institute and each picture was filmed using a mobile phone. 

The Dirty Diaries website outlines the feminist perspective behind the one dozen films highlighting the ways in which they challenge gender norms and empower women. The online manifesto confronts gendered norms of beauty, heterosexism and misogyny and calls for women to engage in safer sex, embrace self-pleasure and celebrate sexual diversity.

Engberg and The Swedish Film Institute defend the public financing of feminist porn as a means of revealing and exploring sexuality through a female’s perspective. The filmmaker emphasizes that unlike mainstream pornography, her work is “not made to please a male audience and it’s not made to make money.”

Not surprisingly, taxpayer funding of the Dirty Diaries series has drawn harsh criticism from conservatives. The Local, a Swedish news source, suggests that feminism has gained an undeserved special status and the funding of feminist erotica represents a saddening disrespect for public monies.

Click here to view (NSFW) clips and stills from Dirty Diaries.

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