The GoldenHle
The first independent awards for gay porn creators from Post-Ost countries. Video, photography, art and NFTs. We look at how it is made — not at how many followers you have.
Enter the holeWhat Post-Ost is
After the East
The awards begin not with porn but with a place. Post-Ost is the space the twentieth century called the Eastern Bloc, and the people who grew up after it ended. Three former systems, dozens of languages and one shared history: socialism, the collapse of 1989–1991 and a long “transition” that never turned into an arrival.
The prefix of an era: postmodern, postcolonial, post-Soviet. It marks not a break but life among consequences — when the old has ended and the new has not yet been named.
A word from the Cold War vocabulary: Ostblock, Ostpolitik, Ostalgie. It is the East as named from outside — from the western side of the Berlin Wall. We take the name back and say it from within.
Post-Ost is not a state, an alliance or a nostalgia. It is a generation and a way of looking: the shared experience of people who grew up in the wreckage of one utopia.
A Post-Ost atlas
Where one can live and film here
How dangerous it is to be a queer author
- low7
- moderate5
- elevated3
- high4
- critical4
Ukraine: Porn decriminalisation — first reading · Kazakhstan: “Propaganda” ban · Uzbekistan: New code keeps the ban
Post-Ost as an idea
Three ways to understand it
The map answers the question “where”. But Post-Ost is also a way of thinking: historians, anthropologists and philosophers have written about it for more than thirty years. Here are the three views we rely on, and what each means for the awards.
The East the West invented
Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe, 1994 · Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans, 1997
Wolff showed that “Eastern Europe” was an invention of Enlightenment philosophers: the West needed a half-civilised neighbour in order to feel civilised itself. Todorova traced the same mechanism in the Balkans. The East is a gaze first and a territory only second.
For the awardsWe look at ourselves. That is why the awards’ first criterion is the author’s own gaze, not how the scene looks from outside.
Transition without arrival
Boris Buden, Zone of Transition, 2009
After 1989 the societies of the region were described as pupils: they had to “catch up” with the West and learn democracy and the market. Buden observed that transition became a permanent condition, and whole nations became history’s eternal adolescents.
For the awardsWe do not measure authors against the Western industry. A scene that grew up without studios has laws of its own; they should be described, not corrected.
Living “outside”
Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, 2006
The last Soviet generation lived inside the system and at the same time “outside” it: they dutifully repeated the rituals while building a world of meaning of their own next to them — in kitchens, boiler rooms, samizdat.
For the awardsQueer life in the region is still arranged this way. The private Telegram channel is heir to the kitchen and to samizdat: a space “outside” where a culture of its own is born.
Being an author here
Making it alone
That is Post-Ost on the map and in books. This is how it looks from inside, to someone making gay porn here. They film, edit and publish on their own — and carry all the risk on their own: no studio, community or institution stands behind the work.
Judgement and isolation
Shame that society passes off as normal: it is safer if neither family nor colleagues know what you do. And there are no studios, schools or festivals where you might meet others like you — everyone starts from zero, almost always alone.
Risk and fragility
In several countries of the region the law calls queer life “propaganda” and porn a crime: being seen can cost you your job, your loved ones, your freedom. Platforms ban, banks refuse, channels vanish overnight — years of work hang on a single account.
Silence and oblivion
People watch the work but never talk about it: instead of a critique, a view counter. This culture has no archive, no criticism, no canon, and what was made disappears with a deleted channel, as if it had never been.
What the awards do
So that no one is alone
The author faces all of this alone — and this is where an award is needed. It will not repeal laws or change a society in one season. But it can do what this scene has always lacked: notice, name and bring people together.
- 01Instead of silence
Support
Name, critique, award. In place of silence, a jury’s close response and public recognition.
- 02Instead of isolation
Unite
Bring scattered authors from some twenty countries into one community, with a shared language, shared reference points and the knowledge that you are not alone.
- 03Without exposing the author
Make visible
Make visible what is usually hidden — the work, not the author’s face. This culture has authors, taste, craft and a history of its own.
What we stand on
Four principles the awards judge by — and by which they can be judged themselves.
- 01
Diversity
DiversityAny body, age, type, genre and format. Twenty-odd countries, four alphabets — and no single “correct” aesthetic.
- 02
Inclusion
InclusionEntry is free, with no threshold of followers or tenure. The jury is drawn from viewers — all it takes is taste.
- 03
Tolerance
ToleranceWe do not judge you for what you like. The jury assesses how the work is made, not whose tastes it offends.
- 04
Equity
EquityEqual chances, not identical conditions. A phone competes with a cinema camera, a channel of a hundred followers with one of a hundred thousand, Tashkent with Prague. The jury looks at the work, not at the author’s budget, country or fame.
Why an award
Why an award rather than a fund or a community? Because an award is one of culture’s oldest tools: it selects, it names, and in doing so it makes a canon. We apply it to territory the canon has always avoided — porn that Post-Ost authors film, photograph and draw for their own channels.
The author is their own director, photographer, artist, editor and model — no studio or producer between the body and the gaze.
Someone conceives porn — and films it, photographs it, draws it, builds it in 3D. It has an author, light, rhythm and a point of view. Everything that makes film, photography and graphic art into art is already here. What was missing were people willing to look seriously.
To be clear, we are not
A festivalWe screen nothing. We name the best and explain why.
A shopA nomination cannot be bought. There are no advertising or sponsored awards.
A beauty contestWe do not score faces, bodies or “market appeal”. The award is for the author’s gaze and craft, not for how the model looks.
A platformThere is no work on this site — no videos, photos or drawings. It stays in the authors’ channels.
What we look at
Porn is not only film
If porn is art, it is not only film. The awards consider adult content in any format and medium. Video does not outrank a photograph, and a photograph does not outrank a drawing: every format competes on equal terms.
- 01
Video
From a long scene to a short clip for stories. Footage shot on a phone weighs as much as footage shot on a cinema camera.
- 02
Photography
A single shot, a series, a photo session, a self-portrait in the mirror. One frozen second that already holds everything.
- 03
GIFs and loops
A short loop where rhythm and repetition decide everything. The most compressed genre of erotica, and one of the hardest.
- 04
Drawing and illustration
Graphics, painting, comics, sketches — by hand or by stylus. A tradition that runs from ancient vases to Tom of Finland.
- 05
Digital and 3D art
Collage, rendering, animation, digital painting, visual art. A body made of pixels and polygons is still a body.
- 06
NFTs
Porn NFTs and crypto art: a work with a single owner, a date and a history. The same format in which we hand out our own awards.
We did not invent this
Who we look up to
We were not the first to look at porn as art. Porn and erotic art have long been screened at festivals, kept in museums and given awards. From each of these institutions we took one principle.
- Berlin, since 2006
PornFilmFestival Berlin
Porn in an ordinary cinema, with a programme and a discussion. The genre moved from private viewing into public space.
- Seattle, since 2005
HUMP!
Short amateur films made by the people in them, not by studios. Proof that anyone can be an author.
- Toronto, since 2006
Feminist Porn Awards
Honoured quality and ethics on set rather than sales. A criterion as a political statement.
- USA
GayVN · Grabby Awards
The industry awards of American gay porn. A model in which the genre recognises itself.
Post-Ost authors who create on their own had no such award. Now they do.
For authors · entries open
Show us how you see
For authors from Post-Ost countries, any format from video to NFTs. All you send is links to your channels. Free to enter.
ApplyFor viewers · jury call open
Critics wanted, with taste
We recruit the jury from subscribers through an essay contest. No tenure or diploma — only taste and the ability to put it into words.
How to join the jury