Laure passed away in The Festival has since expanded to become a vibrant venue for performances, workshops, visual arts, political organising, skills sharing and ever-expanding events for sex workers from San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and from around the world. The Bay Area prostitute activist community was undergoing tensions as well as a lull in organising, although dancers were organising, even unionising, effectively in the city.
Leigh was seeking a project for BAYSWAN that would be more directly reflective of cultural and social aspects of sex workers and our communities. At the same time sex worker activism was burgeoning in the Northwest states, Oregon and Washington, so sex worker community art had a stronghold in the US Northwest. Among these activities, for example, was Danzine, a harm reduction resource and zine in Portland organised by Teresa Dulce. This was an extremely influential project as a large percentage of current sex worker activists were introduced to this issue within the context of this tour.
At that point, film screenings were not the regular events in the sex worker communities in the US that they are now. This movie was one of the centerpieces of the event, catapulting the importance and passion of sex worker film in general. In general film festivals were becoming extremely popular across the US so that sex worker film was a crucial genre for the times.
Around the world we have since experienced the growth of cultural festivals. These congregations were part political and part arts-based. The model of the sex worker festivals were in the form of cultural festivals which focused on movies, performance, other arts, dance workshops and political actions and organising.
In the mid 90s Komal Gandhar formed and later published a crucial and inspiring statement on value of sex worker arts. Videos originate from all over the world.
