RIP to a dearly beloved friend, Candida Royalle.
Candice was one hell of a filmmaker, in a genre that doesn't usually acknowledge that talent. Her porn films were super hot, and proudly feminist, but what always got me was that they looked genuinely great, with a sensitive eye for color, smart compositions, cleverly selective lighting, and camera setups that really evoked the subjectivity of the women on screen. Nearly every scene Candice shot had some clever visual idea– a bit of costuming, a well-chosen angle, a nicely placed shadow– that made them charming as well as sexy.
Candice's films were porn from a woman's point of view, but just as importantly (and just as rare), they were porn from an artist's point of view. You could always sense visual and cinematic intelligence behind the camera. If you want to see just how good a porn movie can be while still being plenty effective as porn, check out UNDER THE COVERS– shot on video, with a starvation budget, and it still manages to be both great-looking and plenty hot.
Candice was a great friend, a wonderful human being, and an inspiring entrepreneur. She transformed porn in ways that porn still hasn't caught up to. But most of all, she was an artist. And I will mourn, and miss, the artist as much as the friend.
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