Anna Span

Anna Span (born 1971 in Kent), became Britain's first female porn film director in 1997.

Anna Span is the current (2007/8) Best Director at this years UK Adult Film & TV Awards, where she also won four awards for her DVD Hug a Hoodie. She is currently nominated for Best Brand and Best Film (Hug a Hoodie) at The UK's trade awards - the ETO Awards. In 2007 she won 'Indie Porn Pioneer' at The International Emma Feminist Porn Awards, in Toronto.

Her work can be seen at www.annaspansdiary.com as can more information about her.

The daughter of Finance Director Clive Thompson, she grew up in Kent. A graduate of the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, she is also a public speaker on sex, pornography, and feminism. Her films are female friendly based on her ideas first outlined in her 1997 dissertation 'Towards a New Pornography' but also sell to men too.

She had her first film aired in 1999 on UK porn channel Television X and has made over 200 scenes to date. Although some women have directed scenes of sexual education for such films as The Lovers' Guide, Anna was the first UK woman to direct films with a clear pornographic intent. There were American women such as Candida Royalle who started filming porn in the 80's, however.

Her films focus on women enjoying sex including lesbian sex and heterosexual sex, with some bisexual sex. Other themes include sex toys, everyday objects (such as a chocolate bar or orange) being used as sex aids, threesomes, group sex and gang bangs. Role playing and fantasy are also common. Sometimes a character from one of her films appears in another. There is a big emphasis on reality both in script and actor performances. In her films she includes a much higher than average percentage of shots which look at the men, which she has termed 'female point of view' shots.

She is openly bisexual herself. and has said, "I'm bi and looking at two women together turns me on."

Since 1998 she has run her own production company, Easy on the Eye productions, which also releases work of other female porn directors that she has trained. She is the author of ''Erotic Home Video' now called 'Shoot your Own Adult Home Movies', a manual on how to shoot one's own home porn films which has sold around 23,000 copies to date.

UK men's magazine Arena called her 'Britain's hottest porn director'.

In September 2007, she was the focus of a TV documentary entitled "Sex Films For Girls", made by Five, which captured her views on pornography and her film approach - including admitting that she was considering starring in a film herself - and featured on-set filming during the making of a film. Her father also appeared in the documentary, expressing a negative view of pornography but a very supportive view of his daughter, nevertheless.

Anna is a regular columnist of The Sport newspaper every Thursday (where she talks of the humour and frustrations of her job) and Scarlet Magazine (Britain's best selling women's sex magazine).

Anna has been an active member of Feminists Against Censorship since the late 90's