Nan Kinney is the president and founder of Fatale Media. She is also the executive producer of Fatale videos and DVDs.
Due in large part to Nan's influence behind the camera and in speaking out to the press, times have changed since the pornless lesbian days of the mid-80s. Nan, who also co-founded the notorious On Our Backs magazine with Deborah Sundahl and Susie Bright, recalls:
"In 1985, when Fatale released Private Pleasures and Shadows, there was no such thing as porn made by and for women. Porn was a dirty word. Now the industry is burgeoning with independent, women-made porn companies."
Over the past 20+ years, Kinney's driving passion has set the standard for women in the industry and encouraged other women to make it their own.
Shar Rednour says, "Nan was such a trailblazer, when no other lesbians were doing lesbian porn she figured it all out—how to fund the videos, how to do the shoots, how to make porn creative and fun. When my partner Jackie Strano and I started S.I.R. Video Productions, it was Nan who believed in us right from the start. She brings joy and humor to the genre."
Nan is still asked the difference between pornography and erotica. She says, "It's pornography if it's explicit and it shows genitals. It's erotica if it doesn't show genitals. We show explicit everything. That's pornography and that's what I do."
And Fatale's influence has even broken the taboo in the mainstream media around discussing women and porn. Fatale's porn has been featured in Cosmopolitan, FHM, Esquire, Playboy, the Village Voice, Salon, HBO's Real Sex, Time Out New York, Paper, Penthouse Forum and many others. Fatale's porn has been aired all over Canada through PrideVision TV and was licensed for nationwide broadcast in France on PinkTV.
Recent Fatale lesbian porn releases include One Night Stand, Coming Home, and others. Fatale's lesbian classics include Suburban Dykes, Hungry Hearts, Bathroom Sluts and others.
In an ironic twist, Fatale is probably best known to the general public for Bend Over Boyfriend, the groundbreaking DVD that teaches women how to strap it on for their guys and is a favorite reference point for sexologists around the world. Directed by Shar Rednour, who also produced Bend Over Boyfriend 2, Bend Over Boyfriend has sold over 50,000 copies in the ten years since its release.
To celebrate women's porn and encourage more lesbians and curious grownups to see good women's porn, Fatale has taken over wholesale distribution of other women-owned porn companies, most notably titles from S.I.R. Video and Isis Media, Inc. All Fatale's titles can be viewed at www.fatalemedia.com/store.html