Interview with Yvon de Korte (as it appeared in Haarscherp, 1977)

Yvon de Korte has won an important prize at the prestigious film festival of Aspen. For her first short erotic film False Delights, she received the award for Best Foreign Language film. False Delights is a ‘collage’ made up of pieces of damaged film, photographic series of self-portraits and drawings made by De Korte. With this production, she has successfully mingled in a completely male dominated world; it is the first Dutch erotic film that is made by a woman.

What was it like to make an erotic movie?

Really, this project has touched me most of all the work I’ve done so far. The leap from photography to film was difficult, but was very satisfying. Now I see this as a natural evolution in my art. Sexuality has always been a central theme in my work and this erotic film is the culmination of a search for my own identity.

What is the relationship between your photos, paintings and movies?

I move between different media and in every area I can express myself in different ways. But I see similarities in my work. My paintings are small, simple and gentle, but my movie False Delights also contains many nuances of tenderness. I think it’s a great opportunity to express yourself in different ways, that way your ideas become much more transparent.

For this film I experimented a lot with sequences of polaroids and how they looked 24 times per second on film. I made self-portraits in my studio and combined them with pieces of erotic movie in extreme slow motion. The themes I explored in this work are comparable to those that can be found in my photographs and paintings.

How important is the script of an erotic movie?

I have written the script of False Delights myself and wanted to break with the familiar story structure of pornographic movies. Therefore, I decided not to tell any story at all. The movie consists of personal experiences, in which I try to break with the cliché that the woman can only be depicted as an erotic object in service of a man.

Do you think that pornography denigrates women?

Well, that is obvious, isn’t it? But it does not have to be that way. In an ideal situation, eroticism is essential to freedom. This film has taught me that sex has no borders. It is time for women to explore their bodies in all possible ways, without a sense of guilt, without the idea that society tries to impose on them, that they do something that is forbidden.

Can you tell us something about your next project?

Well, that does not look good. One of the reasons for my trip to America was to seek money for a new erotic film I wanted to do: Decline. This film is about the end of the patriarchal society as it exists for over 25 centuries in the West, and concludes with a hopeful idealistic society, where women no longer need men to procreate and can take decisions completely independent. But I’ve noticed that my script is misinterpreted by producers. I have therefore decided to withdraw this project and to dedicate myself to photography again. I want to continue with the type of photo series I used in False Delights, in which I see many possibilities. I think it is possible with sequences to bring time into photography, without making film.