About us

About the collection

As part of the analog film collection at Paderborn University, we are dedicated to pornographic small-gauge film, the kind that until the late 1980s could be found in living rooms, in the back rooms of clubs, in adult cinemas, or in coin-operated machines. At the Chair of Film Studies, a holding gradually accumulated over the years from estates and donations. Since 2021 we have been expanding and maintaining it systematically. Today it comprises around 400 titles on Regular 8, Super 8, 9.5mm, and 16mm, with productions from Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Its focal points are loops for home projectors and coin-operated machines, nude, burlesque, and nudist films, as well as stag films.

What we do

Preserving: We secure and catalog film prints and accompanying materials that are typically physically fragile, poorly documented, and at risk of being forgotten, keeping them as primary sources for a visual history that has barely been told.

Researching: These films speak to the aesthetic conventions, social norms, and politics of sexual imagery of past decades. We make them available as material for research into aspects such as intimacy, desire, gender roles, and censorship that goes beyond canonical film history.

Showing: Archival work should not stay behind closed doors. We are currently building a database that holds metadata on the collection and is to be made publicly accessible; more on this will follow on these pages in the coming months. Since 2022, selected titles have also been shown publicly each year at the PaderPorn Film Festival, historically contextualized and accompanied by talks and discussions.

Get involved

Do you have films, packaging, promotional materials, or other items relating to the history of pornographic small-gauge film? Then get in touch. We welcome inquiries and tips of any kind. Much in this field survives only because someone secured it in time.

Write to us at: filmsammlung@proton.me