Shine Louise Houston is a filmmaker and the founding

director Director may refer to: Literature * ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine * ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker * ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty Music * Director (band), an Irish rock band * ''D ...

and producer of

Pink and White Productions Pink and White Productions is an American independent pornographic production company, based in San Francisco, California, that focuses on explicit video web and DVD releases showcasing female and queer sexuality. The company's main director and ...

, an independent

production company A production company, production house or production studio is a studio that creates works in the fields of performing arts, new media art, film, television show, television, radio, comics, interactive arts, video games, websites, music, and video ...

creating

queer pornography Queer pornography depicts performers with various gender identities and sexual orientations interacting and exploring genres of desire and pleasure in unique ways. These conveyed interactions distinctively seek to challenge the conventional modes ...

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. Houston makes feature-length pornographic films in addition to producing, directing, and shooting hundreds of installments for her queer porn membership site CrashPadSeries.com. Houston distributes her own work and that of other indie adult filmmakers through PinkLabel.tv, catering to different sexual communities.

Significance

Shine Louise Houston's films have screened at

film festival A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theater, cinemas or screening venues, usually annually and in a single city or region. Some film festivals show films outdoors or online. Films may be of recent ...

s around the world. Houston speaks widely on issues of representation and sexual freedom of expression. She is heavily involved with the

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

and

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...

art community as well as doing

sexual health Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) is a field of research, health care, and social activism that explores the health of an individual's reproductive system and sexual well-being during all stages of their life. Sexual and reproductive healt ...

work and

sex worker A sex worker is a person who provides sex work, either on a regular or occasional basis. The term is used in reference to those who work in all areas of the sex industry.Oxford English Dictionary, "sex worker" According to one view, sex work is ...

activism Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make Social change, changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from ...

. In her work, Houston features a diverse range of ethnicities, body types, non-conforming genders, and sexual identities 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 Women's studies is an academic field that draws on Feminism, feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining Social constructionism, social and cultural constructs of gender; ...

Penn State #Redirect Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with ca ...

, writes in her book, ''The Color of Kink'', 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. They also feel that Houston incorporates her own pleasure and desire as a black women into her pornography acting as a self-aware

voyeur Voyeurism is the Sexual attraction, sexual interest in or Human sexual activity, practice of watching other people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, Human sexual activity, sexual activity, or other actions of a private nature. ...

and

camera operator A camera operator, or depending on the context cameraman or camerawoman, is a professional operator of a film camera or video camera as part of a film crew. The term "cameraman" does not necessarily imply that a male is performing the task. ...

Education

Houston received a

Bachelor of Fine Arts A Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is a standard undergraduate degree for students pursuing a professional education in the visual arts, Fine art, or performing arts. In some instances, it is also called a Bachelor of Visual Arts (BVA). Background ...

degree in Film from the

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a Private college, private art school, college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mis ...

Career

After graduating, Houston worked at a

Good Vibrations "Good Vibrations" is a song by the American rock music, rock band the Beach Boys, produced and composed by Brian Wilson with lyrics by Mike Love. Released as a single on October 10, 1966, it achieved immediate critical and commercial success, ...

sex shop in the

San Francisco Bay area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

for five years. 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. Community demand inspired Houston to band together with friends to make their own queer pornography. Houston founded

and in 2008 launched the queer pornography distribution site CrashPadSeries.com. The company's first queer porn feature, ''Crash Pad'', starring

Jiz Lee Jiz Lee (born October 30, 1980) is an American pornographic performer, considered a major star of queer porn. Lee is an advocate for the ethical production and consumption of pornography and for the labor rights and sexual autonomy of adult en ...

, establishes the location of all the subsequent CrashPadSeries episodes. 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. Houston incorporates into the scene her presence behind the camera via her own kink, and participation, as a voyeur. In the feature ''SuperFreak'' she stars as the ghost of

Rick James James Ambrose Johnson Jr. (February 1, 1948 – August 6, 2004), better known by his stage name Rick James, was an American singer, songwriter, and record producer. Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, James began his musical career in his tee ...

. The ghost possesses people on a mission to turn the whole world into SuperFreaks having great sex. All models in Pink and White Productions videos seek them out, and Houston organizes scenes around the model's personal fantasies. CrashPadSeries.com debuts episodic, reality-based queer pornography videos. The site is set up like a

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

, featuring photos and identity profiles of the stars to make visible the alternate gender identities and sexualities represented in their videos. As of 2017, Houston is in post-production for their next feature, ''Snapshot'', a horror film dedicated to complicating the limited "

coming out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBTQ people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. This is often framed and debated as a privacy issue, ...

" narrative predominantly featured in mainstream media.

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 XBIZ is an American publisher of business news and business information for the sex industry founded in 1998 and based in Los Angeles. In addition to its flagship "Xbiz.com" website, XBIZ publishes two monthly trade magazines, hosts winter and ...

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

Annie Sprinkle Annie M. Sprinkle (born Ellen F. Steinberg on July 23, 1954) is an American certified sexologist, performance artist, former sex worker, and advocate for sex work and health care. Citing: Sprinkle has worked as a prostitute, sex educator, fe ...

Joani Blank Joani Blank (July 4, 1937 – August 6, 2016) was an American sex educator, entrepreneur, author, videographer, cohousing enthusiast, philanthropist, and inventor in the field of human sexuality, sexuality. She used publishing, her sex store, a ...

Radley Metzger Radley Metzger (January 21, 1929 – March 31, 2017) was an American filmmaker and film distributor, most noted for popular artistic pornographic films, including '' Thérèse and Isabelle'' (1968), '' Camille 2000'' (1969), '' The Lickerish ...

Jim Jarmusch James Robert Jarmusch ( ; born January 22, 1953) is an American film director, screenwriter and musician. He has been a major proponent of independent film, independent cinema since the 1980s, directing films such as ''Stranger Than Paradise'' ...

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featu ...

Michelangelo Antonioni Michelangelo Antonioni ( ; ; 29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and editor. He is best known for his "trilogy on modernity and its discontents", ''L'Avventura'' (1960), ''La Notte'' (1961), and '' ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Houston, Shine Louise Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American pornographic film directors American pornographic film producers Feminist pornography American feminists African-American LGBTQ people San Francisco Art Institute alumni African-American film directors American women film directors Sex-positive feminists Producers of gay pornographic films American LGBTQ women 21st-century African-American people