Biography | Petra Joy

Petra Joy is an award-winning film-maker, photographer and journalist.

Born in Germany, Petra got her first stills camera at the age of 6 and immediately developed a talent for expressing her visual nature. In her teenage years she began to publish her photography, as well as beginning to write articles for magazines. Attending the University of Cologne she read Film Studies and History, gaining her MA in 1990 with a thesis concerning the portrayal of female sexuality in Nazi propaganda films.

After graduating, Petra worked for almost two decades as a freelance television producer and director, working on over 50 documentaries. Many of these works were about female sexuality and the UK sex scene. This work took her to England where she still resides.

In 2004, Petra founded Strawberry Seductress, an erotic photography service aimed at women and couples. Petra’s work soon gathered attention and she was awarded “Photographer of the Year” at the 2004 Erotic Awards.

In the same year, Petra produced and directed her first erotic film, “Sexual Sushi” as an experiment to see if she could bring her vision of female-centred sexuality to the screen. This unique erotic film, featuring a real-life couple and an artistic approach to erotic filmmaking, became a surprise success – even though or because it broke all the mainstream porn rules. Encouraged by this success Petra produced and directed more “art-core” films from a female perspective. In 2006, Petra released her critically-acclaimed follow up to Sexual Sushi, Female Fantasies. This film gathered much media attention and was the recipient of several awards.

In the same year Petra published a book Adult Movie Making for Couples with Harper Collins. This book was published in England, France, Germany, America and Australia and became the basis of porn workshops for women that Petra taught Europe-wide.

Finding similar-minded female directors through festival appearances and networking, Petra began to produce the best-selling Her Porn series in 2008, giving fellow female directors a place to collect and distribute their work that may otherwise have gone unnoticed by many. Petra also utilizes the power of her unique label to distribute fellow female filmmakers such as Marianna Beck and soon also Maria Beatty in Europe.

Encouraged by the idea of promoting existing female directors, as well as mentoring new ones, and with the experience of the difficulties in getting work published, she created the Petra Joy Awards in 2009, with the winning submissions being published on the Her Porn vol. 2. This award is running again this year, in 2012. The topic of the short film competition for women is “Female Fantasies”: www.joyawards.com

Petra’s own film productions continued with “Feeling It (Not Faking It)” in 2008 and then again in 2011 with The Female Voyeur which recently won “Steamiest straight movie” at the Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto.

Petra is recently published A Taste Of Joy, a double DVD, featuring new short films by Petra as well as a documentary about Petra’s work as a feminist pornographer. Her Porn vol. 4 will be published later this year, Petra is currently curating this compilation.

Petra continues to make headlines with her autobiographical book The She Pornographer. Female Fantasies: My Revolution Of Lust which was published by Heyne in Germany in June 2012.