Synopsis:
Elis has been “seeing” Someone:
A recurring ghost who fucks them senseless
When filmmakers Sam, Jane, and June interview Elis for their project on “queer ghosts,” the team can’t quite agree if they’re looking for literal ghosts or researching queer legacies of loss.
It’s a tense situation, made more so by the presence of a lustful, sadistic trickster spirit, disrupting it all with a psychosexual haunting more visceral, transformative, and terrifyingly ecstatic than anyone could imagine. Exploring the ever-present duality of pleasure and loss embedded in queer identity, Haunted uses the intertwining genres of horror, magical realism, and pornography to explore the queer legacies echoing throughout our present lust.
Meet the Cast
Elis
Performer Sakina Sins (they/he)
Elis doesn’t seem bothered by a ghost’s repeat visits to their apartment. How could they be, when the sex is this good?
June
Performer Iris Eclipse (they/she)
A grief-stricken skeptic who refuses to play nice, June and her documentary teammate Jane both dated–and were left by–the same fuckboy. Ouch.
Sam
Performer Fae Laveau (they/them)
Introverted and dryly practical, Sam is more than happy to be behind the camera rather than in front of it. Like so many group projects, they really just want it to be over.
Jane
Performer Zuzu the Girl (she/her)
The documentary team’s woo-woo ringleader, Jane thinks Elis’s ghost sounds an awful lot like someone she and June both used to know…
The Neighbor
Performer M. Wala (she/they)
Elis’s neighbor was born in the building, and has seen decades of life come–and go–inside of it. She’s happy to be interviewed by Jane and June–do they want to come inside?
AJ /
The Ghost
Performer Calba Rio (it/they)
“Veins like an Appalachian watershed. Knuckles you want to pop in your mouth like cherries…” This lustful, sadistic spirit has made quite the impression on Elis. Will the documentary team be able to capture them on film?
![“[AORTA films is] partnering with award-winning author and literary world icon CARMEN MARIA MACHADO on an explicit horror film that’s nothing short of revolutionary.” - “Fuck the Future” in Crosscurrents Magazine, Amy Zimmerman, Fall 2025](https://aortafilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Haunted-Press-Blurbs-10-1-scaled.png)
![“In her writing, [Machado] is no stranger to the weird, spooky, and the erotic. Her writing has become a go-to for queer folks as an exploration of the strange, wonderful, and sometimes horrifying capabilities of human bodies and the way society often hides away from this or rejects it. Now, she’s teaming up with queer ethical porn company AORTA films to make a spooky ghost-hunting porn film.” - “Carmen Maria Machado on Writing Porn” in MATERIAL QUEER, Damian Kerlin, March 7, 2024](https://aortafilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Haunted-Press-Blurbs-07-1-scaled.png)
![“The idea that porn is immoral, unethical or has to forsake identifying as pornography to gain cultural value is outdated,” [Capacity says]. “Our work is powerful precisely because of its explicit erotic charge.” - “Carmen Maria Machado Is Writing an Erotic Film — and You Could Be In It” in THEM, James Factora, September 5, 2023](https://aortafilms.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Haunted-Press-Blurbs-09-1-scaled.png)
Releases & EPK
- Indie Porn Studio AORTA Films Unveils First Look at “Haunted,” a Queer Erotic Thriller Written By Carmen Maria Machado
June 9, 2024 / Read / Download - AORTA films and Carmen Maria Machado Unveil Kickstarter for “Haunted”
October 10, 2023 / Read / Download - Queer Porn Studio AORTA films Announces New Project Written by Author Carmen Maria Machado
May 24, 2023 / Read / Download
Please email inara@inara.agency for access
HAUNTED in the Press
- Fuck the Future
Amy Zimmerman for Crosscurrent Magazine
Issue Five, 2025 - Carmen Maria Machado on Writing Porn
Damian Kerlin’s Material Queer Substack
March 7, 2024 - Queer as in F*CK You
Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya for Autostraddle
September 7, 2023 - Carmen Maria Machado Is Writing an Erotic Film – and You Could Be In It
James Factora for THEM.
September 5, 2023
About the Induction Series
AORTA films’ Induction Series invites brilliant thinkers, makers, and doers from adjacent fields into the queer porn underground.
Welcomed as honored guest collaborators, Inductees bring their unique understandings of pleasure, identity, and embodiment to AORTA’s “ethical porn” practice. Designed to ignite larger conversations about the role of pornography as cultural instigator, media of merit, and art form of significance, the Induction Series explores art and ideas through bodies and sex that can’t be told any other way. Carmen Maria Machado is the Series’ first Inductee.
The first project of the Induction Series, Haunted will be released as AORTA films’ second feature film. The project offers a modular structure, inviting viewers to engage with the project at multiple levels. The feature film (58 min) provides the cohesive narrative that weaves between multiple sex scenes and partners; additionally, each of these scenes will later be available as extended pornographic cuts (7 scenes, 5-12 min each). While the feature film includes plenty of explicit sex, the sex scenes are used narratively, with the direction and edits prioritizing flow, storytelling, and meaning making. Alternatively, the pornographic shorts follow a single story line, attentively luxuriating in the scene’s erotics and nuances, delivering the gratifying queer sex AORTA films is known for.
After traveling the film festival premiere circuit this year, Haunted and its accompanying 7 shorts will stream exclusively on AORTAfilms.com for platform members.
Project Timeline
Coming Soon!
Haunted Teaser Trailer Launch!
Coming soon!
May 2026
Festival Submissions Begin!
Haunted has officially wrapped post production in May of 2026, and is in the process of being submitted to Queer, Indie, Horror/Genre, and Underground Film Festivals across the globe! If you’re interested in having Haunted at your festival, please reach out at helloAORTA [at] AORTAfilms.com!
August 2-8, 2024
Haunted Shoots in NYC!
After months of online rehearsals and negotiations, Haunted shot in Brooklyn, NY over 8 days in August of 2024. The cast of 6 was joined by a crew of 12, and shot across 4 locations during one of the hottest weeks of 2024. Read about what it was like to be on set with AORTA films in this exclusive profile from Crosscurrents Magazine.
November 9, 2023
Haunted Kickstarter Exceeds Goal!
The Kickstarter project reached its goal! 333 backers pledged $24,114 to successfully bring the film to life!
October 10, 2023
“Haunted” Film & Kickstarter Announced
Then, in October, AORTA films launched their Kickstarter for Haunted, which also served as their first announcement of their Induction Series project, entitled Haunted.
August 31, 2023
Casting Call Goes Live
That August, AORTA films put out a casting call for the project. The studio’s first time doing a publicized casting process, the call garnered media attention and 76 applications from all across the US and abroad. Applicants submitted video auditions and advanced through an interview process and test reads before being whittled down to the final 6 cast members.
May 24, 2023
Carmen Maria Machado Announced as First Induction Artist
In May 2023, AORTA films announced Carmen Maria Machado as the Induction Series’ first Inductee. Mahx and Carmen began work on their untitled project, which at the time was envisioned as a central short film about a psychosexual haunting, accompanied by 5 extended pornographic shorts.
October, 2021
Mahx & Carmen Connect at NEWFEST
In October 2021, Mahx’s film “Hole Theory” was programmed as part of NEWFEST’s “Always a Pleasure” shorts program by Shayna Maci Warner (who would go on to become Haunted’s Associate Producer!) Carmen happened to be at the showing and she and Mahx reconnected and started discussing the idea of a collaboration in earnest.
Meet
CARMEN MARIA MACHADo
Writer
Mahx Capacity
Director, Editor, & Co-Producer
Carmen Maria Machado (she/her) is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.”
Her essays, fiction, poetry, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the former Abrams Artist-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mahx Capacity (they/them) is one of the original founders and the current owner and Creative Director of AORTA films. A white, fat, trans/non-binary, taurean pleasure prince, they’re obsessed with wielding queer porn to send cultural fault lines out into the world to disrupt it for the better. Working at the intersections of sextech and regenerative economics with a background in experimental performance, Mahx is drawn to queer porn’s capacity for fierce vulnerability, destabilizing pleasure, and complex humanity.
Mahx is honored to have worked in the adult industry for just under a decade, and NYC’s performing arts scene for just over a decade before that. They were a Movement Research Artist in Residence in 2019, and a NEW INC Incubator Member in Years 10 & 11 in the Cooperative Studies track. Through AORTA films, Mahx has directed and produced 2 feature projects and over 100 short films, winning multiple best film awards across the US, Mexico, and Europe. They are a 2025 recipient of the PorYes Feminist Porn Award.
NOTABLE FILMOGRAPHY:
Best Sex-Positive Film – “Hey Everybody: Let’s Make a Porno!” – SECS Fest (Seattle, 2025)
Best Direction – “Alchemy of the Meat” – Vienna Porn Film Festival (Vienna, 2024)
Artist in Focus – PornyDays Film Festival (Zurich, 2024)
Best Erotic Feature – “(W/HOLE)” – Peephole Festival (Guadalajara, 2023)
Best Porn Short – “Switch for Daddy” – Lustrifen Film Festival (Basel, 2023)
Filmmaker in Focus – Berlin Pornfilm Festival (Berlin, 2022)
Best Docuporn – “Another Beautiful Creature” – SECS Fest (Seattle, 2021)
Best Short – “Hole Theory” – SECS Fest (Seattle, 2021)
Opening Film – “(W/HOLE)” – Athens Pornfilm Festival (Athens, 2020)
Opening FIlm – “(W/HOLE)” – Schamlos! queer-feminist Pornfestival (Bern, 2020)
Opening Film + Best Fiction FIlm – “(W/HOLE)” – Hacker Porn Film Festival (Rome, 2019)
Closing Film – “(W/HOLE)” – London Porn Film Festival (London, 2019)
Best Film – “(W/HOLE)” – Vienna Pornfilm Festival (Vienna, 2019)
Best International Short – “Full” – Hacker Porn Festival (Rome, 2018)
Audience Award – “Solo/Duo” – BRIEFS (Oakland, 2017)
Jury Award – “Digital Genitals” – BRIEFS (Oakland, 2017)
YOUR AWARD-WINNING, ETHICAL QUEER PORN DESTINATION:
Authentically Queer
Fiercely Experimental
Powerfully Obscene
Rigorously
Care-Full
Wildly
Free
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Unlike mainstream hetero porn, queer porn documents the pleasure of resistance and the joy of survival. We create shorts, feature films, and adult programming that explodes with authentic desire, and centers real queer people who feel miss- and under-represented in porn. Our films are made through ethical business practice, care-full on-set and off-set consent practices, and collaborative development with our performers. Moreover, we believe that indie porn is in the infancy of it’s potential as a form–we’re building a studio (and a future!) where explicit media can be seen as a hub of innovation, a form of artistry, and an inextricable part of culture.
Feel free to take a browse around our site–we have a bunch of freebies onsite once you create an account! In fact, when you join our mailing list, we’ll send you your first short film free.
Once you become a member, there’s a TON of content to enjoy. Check out our library of 100+ short and feature films, our Community Hardcore Clip Library full of clips from our incredibly hot community of adult content creators, get in bed with our favorite films of the year semi-annually with the BEDDED Film Festival, or check out one of our AORTAlive workshops to learn some new spicy skills. And last but not least–the reason you’re here–members will get EXCLUSIVE access to Haunted when it premieres on site, as well as everything in the Induction Series!
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