SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – In a world of gonzo lesbian porn sites primarily constructed by men, twilightwomen.com stands out. Unlike its counterparts — where two or more women meet and rip off their clothes without provocation or explanation — twilightwomen offers paced, fleshed-out tales of Sapphic seduction and desire. By the time the steaminess begins, the actresses’ lustful motivations are very clear, inspiring viewers to enter a more satisfying, engrossing voyeuristic experience.
Laura North is the webmistress for twilightwomen and its affiliate program, twilightwomen Affiliates.
YNOT.com: What makes twilightwomen different?
Laura North: We work in long-form, series format, which is in itself somewhat unusual, though certainly not unheard of. We have three ongoing series of full-length movies on the site, and while each movie can stand alone as an erotic film, the cumulative effects of the seduction and erotic tension have the greatest impact when viewed as part of the series.
Our movies tend not to follow what is a very successful and widely utilized format for most girl-girl erotic movies — what one of our fans refers to as the “rules of engagement.” The one- to two-hour length of each movie is not broken up into a series of vignettes. Whether there are two, three or four performers in a given movie, we usually follow those characters through the entire film; we don’t switch couples every 20 minutes or so.
This approach creates a heightened anticipation of what’s to come that our fans recognize as an erotic trademark of a twilightwomen film. There is a near total lack of dialog in our movies. The context for the sex is the story arc of the series itself, not a pretext laid out in a few minutes of dialog. There is often a lengthy, clothed seduction and a certain amount of resistance to that seduction that has to be overcome by desire over time. The sex itself in our movies is intense, intimate and explicit, though perhaps not performative to the extent of many other producers.
Of course, all of this means that our movies are not for everyone. We know this and have tried to make a point of it on the site. What we have found is that a far more diverse market than we initially expected exists for the movies, and it is an extremely loyal market.
What is the concept and aesthetic behind twilightwomen?
We specialize in the drama of seduction, the tension created by some kind of resistance to that seduction and the desire that finally overcomes that resistance.
The idea of wanting something but having a conflict about it for whatever reason is practically universal to the human experience. Of course, we’re fortunate to live in a time and place where much of the inflicted anxiety of the past around sexuality need not impinge quite as heavily on our lives, and nearly all adult content being produced today exploits, celebrates, demonstrates and dramatizes that freedom.
We think that’s great, but we wanted to do something different. When we started twilightwomen.com, there was an abundance — that has only increased since — of content available online depicting almost every imaginable sex act and fetish, depicted and portrayed with great enthusiasm in a fairly straightforward manner.
There were a couple of things we felt were largely missing from the available fare, no matter how well-done otherwise that content was — things that we wanted to see. One was character development, the slow evolution from one state of mind to another that is believable and compelling. Getting to know a character and watching their internal struggle or shift has the potential to draw the viewer into the sexual drama onscreen in a way that heightens the erotic experience of watching the film.
Another related idea is the creation of a sense of drama resulting from some conflict or anxiety about the sexual activity. Our productions tend to revolve around the idea of the tension that is created by wanting something but feeling like you shouldn’t want it or being afraid you won’t get it — or being afraid you will get it. The experience of conflicted desire and the erotic charge that conflict can produce is an idea that has resonated strongly with our members and fans and provoked intense reactions among our viewers.
We’ve tried to reflect that tone of drama and tension in the design of the site itself, as well.
Who are the creative forces behind the site?
I have run twilightwomen.com since its launch in 2005, as well as our affiliate site, twilightwomenaffiliates.com.
All of the movies on twilightwomen.com are directed by one man, Div For’e. Though many people have assumed that our movies were made by a woman, they reflect his vision, he has said, of what a man would like to see. The rest of the crew, though, is usually female, and of course the performers themselves have an influence on the films.
With a background in film editing, Div For’e is a lifelong film historian and an expert on the evolution of pornography in America. Two directors whom he has cited as influences may provide some insight into his approach: Jesus “Jess” Franco, the Spanish film director known for gloriously perverse sexual fantasies and lesbian vampire classics such as The Bare Breasted Countess and Vampyros Lesbos; and prolific sexploitation auteur Joseph Sarno, whose softcore psychodramas invariably portrayed a tension and intimacy in the sex scenes that was unmatched.
From the very beginning, our interest and approach was in making a different kind of erotic movie, one in which the focus was on getting to know characters, following a progression of events over time that leads to a sexual climax, and on portraying a sense of drama and tension that holds the viewer’s interest and intensifies the erotic experience.
Generally speaking, in our movies the seduction, whether clothed or unclothed, is all plotted out in advance by Div For’e up to the point of actual sex. From there, it’s a matter of what comes naturally to the performers and the direction is pretty hands-off from that point.
Where do you find the talent? Are they as into the scenes as they seem?
The naturalness and intimacy with one another that the women in our movies portray is something that has been mentioned in every interview or article written about twilightwomen.
Casting is an important part of the process for us. We’re a San Francisco Bay Area-based company, and many of the performers in our movies are local to this area. A number of the women we’ve worked with have come to us via word-of-mouth. Our performers, for the most part, wouldn’t consider themselves professional porn stars or models. They have been very up-front about their ideas, preferences and things they won’t do.
We prefer to work only with those who are on some level into the fun of making the movies. They become friends and have a high level of trust with us. Thus, we’ve made a general rule of not discussing them as real people. However, I think the large cast of returning performers speaks for itself.
To whom to you market twilightwomen?
When we launched the site, the obvious twilightwomen fan to us was an erotica connoisseur who was looking for something different. What we have discovered over and over, however, is that the appeal of our movies — and the demand for movies like ours — is much broader than we initially imagined.
We have extremely loyal fans from literally all walks of life. What’s more, I hear regularly from straight men, couples and lesbians of every age who all feel that we made these videos just for them; that we somehow plucked the most erotic fantasies and experiences from their minds and turned them into twilightwomen movies. The drama of conflicted desire and lust and the perverse ways that desire manifests itself in our movies strikes an intense chord with consumers, even ones who’ve never thought to look for something different from the norm before.
This is, in part, why we decided to launch our webmaster partnership program, twilightwomen Affiliates. We know from almost a decade of experience that we can make long-term customers out of a wide demographic cross-section. We’re excited to invite new webmasters to become our partners in seduction.
