Shine Louise Houston Hosts Pink Label’s “Shiny Shorts” Film Screening

Award-Winning Queer Director Provided Commentary and Context for Six Erotic Shorts

The first rule of PinkLabel.tv's PornClub is that you should tell anyone of legal age you can about it. Okay, that’s my made-up rule, but it’s a good one and I’m comfortable defending it. The brainchild of director Shine Louise Houston and her Pink & White Productions, PornClub offers an assortment of unapologetically queer pleasures to its members, including the June 3 “Shiny Shorts” Virtual Screening and Film Study event.

The words “Film Study” only scratch the surface of what took place that Thursday evening. It was dishy, it was sexy, it was intelligent, it was informative, and it was interesting. After all, it’s the rare film study class that utters “You really caught the highlight off of the dick” so early in an evening’s commentary.

After some short-lived host-to-soundtrack volume issues, Houston and her couch companions were able to make their opinions and experiences known. For an hour, they discussed the realities of making porn that dares to be artful, erotic, and taboo. They also revealed an almost perverse love of cameras. But more on that expensive perversion later. Before we get to talks of unnatural acts with a video camera, I’d like to introduce you to just a few of Houston’s shorts that I found either especially fun to watch or fun to watch while masturbating.

Writing In Bed: My favorite line heard during this short was “Nothing like a handjob to break the monotony,” and the only thing I don’t like about that is that it wasn’t uttered by either of the characters in the film. Nonetheless, hostly witticisms are worthy of acknowledgment and I couldn’t let this one pass.

What Tommy Pistol and Ingrid Mouth do say, however, is both funny and sexy as fuck. What they do is even more panty-dropping. While there’s no question what’s going on since Pistol’s cock is not shy during the scene, Houston employs a less is more approach at times, allowing what the viewer has seen to inform their fantasy during moments when the camera finds a face, a hand, an excuse to both communicate the thrill of arousal and the frustration of denial, however brief.

So, yeah. Watch it. Great acting, funny dialogue, Pistol pretending to be drunk, Mouth taking a break from her writing, and the viewer wishing they had more lube… so stock up!

Birthday: I’ve only recently realized how sizzling hot the right butch can be. Barbary Rose, however, is a femme who is not new to knowing what she likes and, while celebrating her birthday at a sexy club, she shows viewers that she knows how to get it. With the help of stone butch Nenna Feelmore, that’s how.

Rose leans against a wall and gives herself pleasure while an assortment of cis dudes unwillingly learn about boundaries and taking care of their own genital engorgement issues. If there’s anything that Feelmore is good at doing, other than silently smoldering and… well… everything, it’s using a single look to cock block men who think they can get grabby just because Rose has her panties down around her ankle. Feelmore may be enjoying the show, but she knows her job is to watch and stand guard.

When the couple retires to Feelmore’s apartment and Rose expresses her desire, something you’ll never see happen in mainstream porn happens and it’s wonderful. What it is, you’ll have to see for yourself, obviously.

Camera and I: Starring Jasko Fide and a talking video camera, this short takes the concept of gender and tells 24 truths about it per second. This was the last film Houston shot before COVID-19, a plague that reminds us that masks are like condoms for our faces. In some ways, this felt like the most important of the five shorts.

While every release from Houston challenges the stereotypes about what being a “man” or “woman” means, when the theoretically gender and sex-free video camera begins hitting on Fide during an interview, the conversation takes a turn. Sure, there was camera nerd talk from Houston while discussing the behind-the-scenes of the film, but techno-stroking aside, the question remains, does a conscious machine have a gender? Can it, like Fide, identify as a “they?” What does it mean for a person to embrace the term, particularly when they begin making love right back to the camera and are, indeed, ready for their close-up?

Oh, and those of you who like to watch full-bodied femmes pee in the alley? You’ll want to check this one out for certain.

CrashPad Classics and Put the Needle on the Record: Don’t think that bundling these two together is meant in any way to diminish the quality of either gem, because it’s not. CrashPad has evolved into an amazing series of stolen moments between lovers, all while managing to retain its sexual heat and intensity after multiple episodes. Put the Needle on the Record provides a stellar example of Houston’s ability to arouse without being explicit, making it a nice contrast to the CrashPad scene, which features strap-on play.

Each scene, however much it whets our whistle, brings us back to not-so-simple issues like gender and identity and feeling good in our bodies, however, they are constructed. Also, having, sharing, inspiring, encouraging, or sometimes enabling others to feel good in their bodies. The very way Houston casts her films is designed to arouse, inform, and show solidarity with sexual beings, including those who might otherwise not have the opportunity to demonstrate their willingness to do in front of a camera what too many people are still afraid to do at all.

The American sex-ed system is such that these shorts will be highly educational as well as deeply arousing and potentially unsettling. While I don’t think that porn has a responsibility to be anyone’s sexual tutor, it is reassuring to know that Shine Louse Houston and her PinkLabel.tv's PornClub have combined her obvious artistic abilities with a sensibility and sensitivity that can’t help but leave its fans feeling a little better about themselves and what kind of pleasure they can indulge in.