Pornographic website, Pornhub, has released its first non-pornographic movie, a documentary which is a shift away from its usual offering. Pornhub made the announcement for the premiere of the documentary last week on their official Instagram page.
The documentary, based on footage that filmmaker Leilah Weinraub shot over the past 15 years, is titled Shakedown and it is a deep dive into the lives of Queer women who worked in the black-owned and operated strip club of the same name in Los Angeles where Weinraub herself worked in her early 20s.
According to Cinemablend, Shakedown will look at the club’s history in the early 2000s and will be housed on a special page on Pornhub.com dedicated to the new piece of non-adult content. Because Shakedown is the first non-adult film that Pornhub has ever officially released, Pornhub has made it free to stream for the entirety of March. It will also hit the iTunes store in summer.
In an interview with Variety, Weinraub says “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”.
“This film is part of a larger general commitment Pornhub has to supporting the arts,” Pornhub’s brand director, Alex Klein adds. “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.”
Pornhub has dedicated an entire directory on their site towards the project. Weinraub hopes users can be “alone, together” especially since a chat window will be open for discourse, and Weinraub will drop in once a week to have conversations with users.
