Adult Movies and Small-Gauge Films

This chapter offers an overview of the way in which substandard film formats—namely 16mm, 8mm, and Super-8—were used by the producers, sellers, and exhibitors of pornographic films. These groups tended to exploit the ways in which the consumer film market already functioned rather than innovating entirely new practices, taking advantage of existing infrastructure for distributing and shooting films. By the middle of the twentieth century the “legitimate” small-gauge film industry had grown to the point that pornographic filmmakers could take advantage of that as well, making films using the equipment from small production houses and modeling new exhibition spaces after other kinds of 16mm theaters, such as arthouses. The progression of substandard film formats after the era of legal censorship is documented, as is the arrival of videotape, which would eventually replace small-gauge film for professional producers and spectators alike.