Annie Sprinkle

Biography

Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., is a pioneering feminist artist, experienced filmmaker, and certified sexologist. Between 1974 and 1996, she contributed to over 100 adult feature films. Sprinkle has been featured in numerous documentaries and six B movies before gaining recognition as a performance artist and independent filmmaker on an international scale. The relationships she cultivated throughout her career significantly influenced her engagement with feminist issues, human rights, and the promotion of free expression, and she continues to passionately advocate for these causes.

Her films have been showcased in countless film festivals globally, with "Sluts & Goddesses" (1990) marking a significant advancement in feminist cinema. Sprinkle served as a paid consultant for HBO’s "The Deuce," featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal. In 2027, her film "Water Makes Us Wet" debuted at the esteemed documenta 14 in Germany, where she also performed, lectured, and exhibited her work, followed by a screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA). Sprinkle's accolades include a Guggenheim Fellowship for filmmaking, four grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Kathy Acker Award for Achievement in the Avant Garde (2014), and the Artist/Scholar/Activist Award from Performance Studies International at Stanford (2013), as well as the Tom of Finland Lifetime Achievement Award (2020). Her archive is maintained at Harvard University. Currently, Annie Sprinkle is presenting the third installment of her queer environmental documentary trilogy, "Playing with Fire—An Ecosexual Emergency," and appears in the HBO special, "Dear Ms.—A Revolution in Print." At 71, she remains actively engaged in filmmaking.