From www.thetimes.co.za – Commercial film director Ross Winters [pictured] has started South Africa’s first porn production company.

On a shivery winter’s day, famous porn star Kurt Rogers is wearing a tweed coat and a beanie. His blue eyes look like cracked china; he looks delicate and sexually remote, as if a single break in his physical envelope would make him explode. He is suspicious and unforthcoming.

He says he is 33, but he might be younger or older; players in the porn industry seldom give their real ages or names.

Ross Winters is a large man, married, in his 30s, drawn to leather jackets, and wearing black.

“I am not gay or even bisexual, but I have this dream of making porn.” He has recently finished his first gay porn movie, Rogered.

Recently he and Rogers teamed up to form the first South African porn company — Liberate Studios.

Rogers is known as “the machine” in the industry. According to him, he can perform one penetrative sex scene after another. He has done 14 or 15 porn movies, mainly abroad, and can produce on demand.

“I think I was made to be a porn star,” he says. “When we made the last movie, I did my full scene and shot my load. Afterwards we had to shoot the next guys doing their scene — the one guy couldn’t get hard and so I realised, well, we don’t have enough footage. So I said, ‘Give me five and I’ll be up and I’ll take his place’ and we did the scene on the pool table.”

He adds: “We had really good energy that day.”

Although male porn stars use Viagra, Rogers says he doesn’t really need it, but takes it as a backup. They do, however, use condoms.

Two years ago, Winters had just come back from London where he had been shooting commercials.

“I talked to a German filmmaker about my interest in making porn in South Africa. He said, ‘I don’t know why you guys haven’t done it before. You have great infrastructure, great scenery, plus you’ve got all the post- production facilities.’”

Winters admits it was risky and very, very challenging: “Perhaps if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have gone for it. It is hard enough shooting a box of soap powder, but when you are dealing with four or five people having sex, you can’t imagine the complications. It is very tricky to capture sexual energy on film and that was one of the reasons I was inspired.”

More recently it has become a popular subject at prestigious art schools. Anna Span, a female director of porn who studied at the prestigious St Martins College of Art and Design, talks to me from London. “I chose porn because it was an underdeveloped genre. I was the first woman porn director in England.”

A couple of years ago, the main exhibit at the Turner Prize exhibition was porn-based and caused a furore.

“My main aim,” says Winters, “was to do it completely professionally. We used 35mm lenses and had an experienced camera crew, gofers, sparks, assistant director, the whole lot. I shot it as if I was shooting a high-end commercial. No expense was spared.

“We usually shoot one scene a day, although we can do more. A lot of effort goes into pre-production.”

The most difficult part is the casting — the film took three months to cast and three days to film. Liberate Studios say they keep absolutely within the law, only 18 and over and every applicant is required to produce his ID and driving licence. An application form asks for specifics of penis size, biceps and abdominals and whether the applicant is willing to have anal sex, receive anal sex, spank, or rim, among other things.

“We previously auditioned by asking the guys to do a solo jerk-off scene,” says Winters, “but we realised that this really didn’t give us enough information about whether they could perform in front of the camera. Now we get them together with other guys and see how they work together.

“Most stars are specific about what they will or will not do. For example, some love being rimmed but won’t rim. Some will do anal, some won’t.”

Both Winters and Rogers have sunk a significant amount of capital into the venture. They believe that porn sells in recessionary times.

But seeing a porn movie being made is tricky.

It remains a transgressive activity which resides in the shadowy embrace of the underworld and frequently includes desperadoes and beguiled romantics.

“We’re shooting this weekend,” said Winters. “Why don’t you just come around between scenes and meet the boys?” Although I didn’t want to watch the actual filming — nothing bores me more than porn — I was interested that local boys were willing to be identified.

But it turned out that, in nearly all cases, an infinite realm of half truths seemed to copulate and multiply with excuses like, “I am proud of what I do, but my mother who lives in Pretoria doesn’t know.”

One even said he used to present a religious programme and being seen making porn might be what he termed “inappropriate behaviour”.

“I’ve done it for years and I’ve worked as an escort, but I can’t bear to tell my mother,” says Rogers, with his impassive, porn-star looks.

“I really wanted to break the mould and get people to be more accepting, but I don’t want to hurt my family.”

However, he was at the Sexpo wearing a tattoo and a G-string.

Sexuality has always mainlined on hypocrisy and porn is still firmly niched in the demi-monde.

I found myself tiptoeing across boundaries and using euphemistic expressions: “Did he manage to perform?” However, Bruce Cairns, a boy from Riversdale, doesn’t care who knows he is a porn star. He has done many things, including working as a “food ambassador” (waiter?).

I questioned him about what makes a good porn star.

“It’s someone who genuinely likes sex, who takes care of their body, and someone who doesn’t just rely on their looks, but really takes pride in their performance. Someone who has quirks to the way they perform.

“I have always loved showing off, being an exhibitionist,” he says. “The exposure was amazing. I come from a very liberal family and they have always supported me. I am aspiring to be a big porn star. I have this passion for being paid for something that I feel is really me.”

With a groundswell of porn, available on cellphones and rampant on the Net, not seeing porn is more difficult than seeing it.

But what, I wondered, would make a porn aficionado buy locally made porn when there is so much available?

“There’s a lot of water around, but people still buy bottled water,” says Winters. Well, yes, because it is cleaner.

“What makes us unique is that we are 100% South African. All the boys are local and we have beautiful locations.”

“Also, there is no scarcity of local talent,” Rogers reminds me.

He adds a trifle smugly: “Afrikaans boys have a reputation for being well-hung. When I lived in London, everyone wanted to date me.”

The problem really comes in catering for all tastes.

“It’s the most personal thing ever,” says Winters. “I have gay friends who love straight porn. We started off with wall- to-wall background music and a bit of a narrative, and people would say, ‘Can’t you just get to the sex.’”

For others, the stream of scrotums and tight sphincter muscles palls.

“What turns people on is often very obscure,” says Winters. The famous writer- anthropologist Roland Barthes describes some- thing called the “punctum”, often a small, overlooked detail that might excite one individual, but is not noticed by others.

Until recently porn has been enamelled with a Hollywood varnish, but there has been a big shift towards the more amateur stuff, where people want to see real people having real sex.

“The trick,” says Winters, “ is to use real people, very well filmed by expert camera men. We’ve been learning as we’ve been going along.

“For example we didn’t realise to light penetration you need to light from below. We now have a special attachment on our camera.

“In our first film, we had lube dropping onto the lens. This is not the stuff you can go to school to learn.”

In the long run Winters’s aim is to do straight porn, but finds it difficult to get girls. They’ll say, “Oh, I’d love to do porn and then at the last minute they’ll get cold feet. It is easier for me to ring up Hungary or Czechoslovakia and order the girls I want. They fly over here to do a movie for as little as R4000. And let me tell you, they are real babes.

“We know we’re learning,” says Winters. “But you can’t be taught this at school. In the meantime I’m really enjoying it.”

There is always the sense in porn that there is the thinnest membrane holding back something that is about to explode — so one day Liberate Studios might just join the likes of Vivid and Wicked, top porn-movie makers in America.