Pornhub has released non-adult film about ‘real lesbian strip club operated by black women’

‘Radical’ new release available to watch for free on adult site now

Pornhub has released a film about a real-life lesbian strip club in what is the website’s first ever non-pornographic film.

The porn site, which attracted an estimated 42 billion visits in 2019, wants to expand its audience with Shakedown, a nonfiction film from conceptual artist Leilah Weinraub.

Shakedown ​compiles 15 years of footage shot by Weinraub as he documented queer women and men who populated Los Angeles’ lesbian strip club scene in the early 2000s.

The film specifically depicts a real “eutopic” lesbian strip club that is owned and operated by gay women of colour.

Since 2017, the film has been shown as part of exhibitions at the Whitney Museum and MoMa in New York.

Pornhub described the film as “an essential piece of LA history, of radical queer filmmaking and of contemporary video art”.

Weinraub told Variety that he's hoping to particularly draw the attention of Pornhub’s female visitors and has vowed to visit a “self-contained online home” once a week so she can talk to the film’s viewers.

She said: “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.”

The film will be available to stream for free on Pornhub from Wednesday (4 Match) until April and will later arrive on the Criterion Channel and iTunes.

“[Shakedown] is part of a larger general commitment Pornhub has to supporting the arts,” Pornhub’s brand director Alex Klein said. “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.”