Prague- Two naked girls, one raven-haired, the other a brunette, stroll across the Industrial Palace in Holesovice to a buffet table and stretch out on their backs. A third girl, a blonde, arrives with a tray and covers their bodies with slices of cucumber, apple, cheese and salami.

The spectacle quickly draws a crowd of men, mostly middle-aged, who jostle for viewing space. Unfazed by the intense stares, the supine girls, beautiful and relaxed, smile serenely as the onlookers start to pick morsels off them.

Welcome to Erotica Sex 2005 – an annual trade fair held Sept. 29-Oct. 2, which, apart from showcasing products including exotic sex toys and libido-enhancing herbs, this year featured live shows with couples having sex before an admiring crowd of hundreds.

Barbara Maestrelli, a foreign-sales manager for an Italian company specializing in hard-core adult movies, watched the erotic buffet from her stand. “Two years ago we shot mostly in Budapest. Now we are looking for new locations so that all the films don’t look the same,” she says. Her company, ATV Entertainment, shot a big production in the Czech capital earlier this year. “We [will surely] shoot other films in Prague. Prague is popular and becoming more important.”

Others at the fair, now in its 11th year, concur that it reflects more than local curiosity about porn – and that Hungary, for years considered the European capital of the industry in terms of production, may no longer be in the clear lead. Producers are drawn to the comparatively low cost of shooting in Prague, liberal laws governing porn and, most importantly, a plentiful supply of beautiful women with few inhibitions.

“Prague in the past four years has become the biggest city for the adult industry in the whole of Europe, in terms of making movies,” says Oldr(ich Widman, 35, a porn director and the owner of Dream Entertainment, one of the biggest Czech erotic film companies. Widman says that even though the Czech Republic has just a fraction of the porn output of, say, California’s San Fernando Valley – where adult productions are a billion-dollar industry – it has a disproportionately large impact on the world market.

“If you look in a store anywhere in Europe and check any DVD, you always find one Czech or Slovak girl in it,” he says.

Widman says the “quality performers” in the Czech Republic is what attracts foreign filmmakers. “American girls are pretty fake, with silicone boobs and fake lips. … What sells the most at the moment is the natural stuff, good-looking girls, no silicone. And the Czech Republic has a big supply of talent … a lot of beautiful girls that are willing to do porn and are not ashamed and not afraid.”

Videos and DVDs are the biggest product in this country’s porn and erotic industry, generating more profit than adult magazines or strip bars, according to insiders, who estimate this country has around 500 mostly part-time porn actors and actresses.

Widman declines to reveal his company’s annual income but says he makes 10 straight and seven gay movies a year, the more expensive ones costing some 980,000 Kc( ($40,000) to produce. He exports most of his movies across Europe because the Czech Republic’s small size makes it difficult to turn a profit on the domestic market unless production costs are very low.

In recent times a flood of cheap adult DVDs from Germany and the Netherlands has caused problems for Czech producers. But there are ways to survive, Widman says. “You can still make decent money for a decent living,” he adds. That is particularly true for those making money from Internet porn, which has the advantage of minimal distribution costs.

Dean Selby, an American expatriate in Prague, is one such businessman. His company, Eromaxx.net, runs 12 Web sites with various colorful names such as www.drunksexorgy.com. His clients, mostly in the United States, pay a monthly membership fee to watch scenes like group sex involving up to 90 people, mostly shot in and around Prague.

Selby, 36, also declines to give figures but says his business has expanded massively since he set up a single Web site five years ago. “The Internet has done a lot of things to the business of adult entertainment,” he adds. “One of the main things is it’s killed off longer, expensive movie productions,” which are no longer competitive.

Ivana Mattei, 38, [pictured] who claims to be the only woman producer and director of porn in the Czech Republic, says business for domestic producers and distributors of traditional porn movies today is a far cry from the boom years following the end of communism in 1989.

“In those times you literally sold trucks of videotapes,” she says. “After a couple of years, the business stabilized itself.”

Mattei says that her firm, Bohem Production, produces 12 movies on average each year, mostly for export to Europe and the United States. She says the company, which also runs a job agency for porn actors, has a consistent annual revenue of 10 million Kc( ($400,000).

Mattei is also an organizer of Erotica Sex 2005, which attracted around 15,000 visitors this year, up from 10,000 in 2004. When the trade fair started a decade ago, Mattei says, “Practically everyone was scared to death. I remember policemen gathering in groups and discussing whether or not our fair is legal.”

Local attitudes have grown more liberal since then, but the fair does have its critics, who argue it could contribute to Prague’s international reputation as a sleazy sex haven.

“The fair can’t hurt Prague’s image – but it is also true that it doesn’t help it,” says Tomáš Ru*žic(ka, who manages the sex fair. Dismissing moral objections, Ru*žic(ka insists that the fair is “for ordinary people that are interested in erotic culture and aren’t afraid of experiments. Everyone has a choice – to go or not to go.”