Photos by Helias Doulis
Words by Alastair James

Erotic cinema: Artist Helias Doulis takes us on a journey

In short: Helias Doulis‘ “obsession” with erotic cinemas goes back to some of his earliest creative inspirations, such as the work of actress Isabelle Huppert. In his latest short film, Angelo, a young man treads cautiously up to and then across a threshold into a completely new world positively brimming with fantasies and dreams come to life. It’s sexy and erotic but also a relatable exploration of sexuality and identity. Currently making the rounds on the film festival circuit, Angelo builds off of Doulis’ previous works including his short film The Beauty of Stigma and The Nest, as well as his photography namely the provocative piece, A Faggot’s Destiny. While porn cinemas are a place of fun, experimentation, and beauty, Doulis argues they are also a pure form of intimacy, often free of shame, and full of love, liberation, and euphoria.

It’s late at night and Angelo, a cherubic young Albanian man, attends to a record store in a non-descript side street in 1990s Athens. 

In walks a handsome man, moustached, clad in a leather jacket, and jeans that perfectly highlight a tight, round ass.

There’s an energy, a spark. The scene crackles with sexual tension and lust. The leather-clad man picks a record, pays and leaves but not before leaving a slip of paper behind.

Whilst at first Angelo discards this, it sets off an exploration of sexuality for our young hero.

Doulis’ experience in Paris led to him shooting A Faggot’s Destiny in Athens, shooting early one morning before the business opened. The imagery here is erotic. Men crouch down as they fellate one another. Hands stretch past denim waistbands to explore hidden treasures while others pleasure themselves as they watch films or others experiencing the pleasure of a good hand job.

But there is also an intimacy that goes beyond performing intimate acts on one another. This is a space where men can be themselves, a setting where so long as consent rules, anything can happen. Your wildest fantasies can come true, freedom brought to life in the dim light of the booths or the pitch black of the dark room. Intimacy is a key theme in Doulis’ work, from Angelo and A Faggot’s Destiny to Parabyss: A Nurtured Nature or his other films, The Beauty of Stigma and The Nest. This focus comes partly from queer people growing up not feeling like intimacy is something they can have or enjoy. “I have this need to show people we can exist in this,” says Doulis. “There is this need for intimacy. All people that go to an adult cinema want to experience intimacy. A hand job can be intimacy, a quick blow job, the loving partnership of six years that I am currently in. You can experience anything as intimacy. It’s the need for closeness.”

But just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is meaning and interpretation. Doulis discovered this with Parabyss, a series exploring people’s relationship with nature shot on the gay nudist beach of Limanakia. “People were like, ‘I can see eroticism, sensuality,’ anything like that. I was thinking, where do you see all that? Because I see intimacy.” The artist recognises the natural variations on viewpoints, but maintains intimacy is at the core of everything. “That’s something I crave, in other people’s work as well. Even in photographs from a nightclub of boys dancing I see lots of intimacy, even if those people just found each other at 4am. That’s intimacy.”

A Faggot’s Destiny is an ode to the cruising era, something Doulis sees as a victim of the rise of dating apps. Discussing his motivations further, Doulis felt cruising needed to be captured, even if it is a staged version of what takes place in such places. “I let people be themselves and be open,” he starts allowing his models the freedom to explore as a bird flies freely in its natural habitat. “What I find fascinating is the space – the smell, the sense of things that you get surrounded by. You’re in a place where people from the previous night or a few hours ago have just tapped each other or jerked off themselves. But what’s more fascinating is how easily people that don’t normally go to those places get adapted to them.”

This feeds into another common thread among Doulis’ work, liberation – what queer men do when free of stigma and the prying eyes of others. Shame, Doulis, notes, dissipates in these spaces, these fading sanctuaries is where shame is overcome. “I feel like shame comes from a place where you don’t know how to act, how to perform love. All these places are full of love, for me. They’re made from love, even though somebody has just jerked off crying in there, that’s a place of love because that’s when you feel the freest,” he opines.

Photos by Helias Doulis
Words by Alastair James

Erotic cinema: Artist Helias Doulis takes us on a journey

In short: Helias Doulis‘ “obsession” with erotic cinemas goes back to some of his earliest creative inspirations, such as the work of actress Isabelle Huppert. In his latest short film, Angelo, a young man treads cautiously up to and then across a threshold into a completely new world positively brimming with fantasies and dreams come to life. It’s sexy and erotic but also a relatable exploration of sexuality and identity. Currently making the rounds on the film festival circuit, Angelo builds off of Doulis’ previous works including his short film The Beauty of Stigma and The Nest, as well as his photography namely the provocative piece, A Faggot’s Destiny. While porn cinemas are a place of fun, experimentation, and beauty, Doulis argues they are also a pure form of intimacy, often free of shame, and full of love, liberation, and euphoria.

It’s late at night and Angelo, a cherubic young Albanian man, attends to a record store in a non-descript side street in 1990s Athens. 

In walks a handsome man, moustached, clad in a leather jacket, and jeans that perfectly highlight a tight, round ass.

There’s an energy, a spark. The scene crackles with sexual tension and lust. The leather-clad man picks a record, pays and leaves but not before leaving a slip of paper behind.

Such is the story of Angelo, a coming-of-age short film that blends elements of science-fiction, the latest from photographer and director, Helias Doulis. The titular character is a representation of the artist; he shares over Zoom from Athens. Beneath the sexuality and intimacy on display, the film also contains deeper messages of identity and migration linked to Doulis’ own family history.  “I wanted to build a character that is present, but others don’t really rush to see him. He’s [also] eager because of his sexuality,” he tells me. Doulis sees all his work as being somewhat semi-autobiographical. “I build characters based on myself first, because most of the things you see in my work, I should have experienced them before. I’m an artist, I can visualize things that I haven’t experienced, but it doesn’t feel real.”

Angelo’s voyage of discovery takes him to an erotic cinema. However, he initially struggles to cross the threshold, unsure at first if the reality is as good as the fantasy in his head. The location of an adult cinema is not new territory for Doulis. His 2019 work, A Faggot’s Destiny, took a voyeuristic look into the world of Athens’ porn cinemas, examining the intimate acts that take place behind closed doors in an environment free of external shame and full of possibility, fantasy, and cum.

The origin of this “obsession” with adult cinemas (as Doulis himself notes on his website) lies “big time” in the adult films his parents collected from newspapers in Doulis’ youth. When left alone he would sneak a peek at these films. Isabelle Huppert’s voyeuristic central character in The Piano Teacher was also an inspiration. “I had this image of her visiting the adult cinemas in Paris, watching porn and smelling the cummy tissues of previous visitors. And I said to myself, I’m going to go to Paris and do the same thing.”

He did in 2018, photographing a magazine feature of his work in a small booth. Doulis recalls entering the cinema and walking a corridor just like Angelo, a narrow space lined with horny men each looking for their next orgasm, soundtracked by the moans of pleasure and occasional wretch as a man gags on a cock. So, what is it about adult cinemas that fascinated Doulis so much? “It’s that sense of a pure orgasm that you shouldn’t have an experience you shouldn’t have, but you’re having it and you’re enjoying it.”

But just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is meaning and interpretation. Doulis discovered this with Parabyss, a series exploring people’s relationship with nature shot on the gay nudist beach of Limanakia. “People were like, ‘I can see eroticism, sensuality,’ anything like that. I was thinking, where do you see all that? Because I see intimacy.” The artist recognises the natural variations on viewpoints, but maintains intimacy is at the core of everything. “That’s something I crave, in other people’s work as well. Even in photographs from a nightclub of boys dancing I see lots of intimacy, even if those people just found each other at 4am. That’s intimacy.”