Director Profile – Angie Rowntree

About Angie Rowntree:
The daughter of an actress and a commercial airline pilot, Angie spent much of her early life globe-hopping between her native Canada, Australia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, among other destinations. It was an apt start to a life of trailblazing, risk-taking and odds-defying which has propelled Angie to the top of her field as a director of adult films.

Read on…

In 1993 Angie and her then boyfriend (Colin Rowntree) started a online catalog business which sold, among other things, BDSM accessories and fetish gear. They very quickly noticed that far more people were downloading the images on their catalog site than purchasing the products depicted, they got an idea: If people are more interested in the images themselves, why not sell access to the images, rather than merely using them for promoting products?

So it was that Wasteland.com was born in 1994, beginning Angie’s foray into the world of adult entertainment. Before long though, Angie was inspired by another observation about her chosen vocation: There was almost no pornography on the market which appeared to have been made with female viewers in mind.

Bucking the advice of other producers, who almost universally agreed there was no such thing as “porn for women,” Angie launched Sssh.com in 1999 with the goal of creating erotica which represented a woman’s perspective and aesthetic sense.

A key component to Angie’s success has been her willingness to ask questions of her audience – and more to the point, her willingness to listen to the answers provided. Intuitively, Angie knew if she simply created porn based on her own tastes and turn-ons, this wouldn’t necessarily make it appealing to a diverse female audience, many of whom might not share her preferences.

To address this concern, Angie instituted a user survey she has used to solicit feedback from women who visit Sssh.com for over 17 years now, frequently updating the survey with new questions to keep pace with the changing market.

This approach has served Angie and Sssh very well, creating a loyal and active fan base which provides constant valuable feedback which has often contributed directly to the success of her work. Angie’s award-winning 2015 film Gone, for example, is based on the true story of a Sssh.com member whose tale so moved Angie, she immediately felt compelled to bring the story to the screen. The result is an unusually emotional and touching work of erotica one reviewer called “perhaps the most significant porn film this reviewer has ever seen.”

While Gone is anything but the typical adult film, departing from the norm is nothing new for Angie, who always strives to create more connection, more chemistry and more depth of feeling between the characters in her movies than one usually sees in pornography. Beyond being part of her essential ethos and aesthetic sense, Angie has always believed the hottest sex happens between people who are emotionally invested in each other and not simply performing sex acts ‘by the numbers,’ so to speak.

The desire for legitimate on-screen chemistry and connection is why Angie prefers to use real-life couples whenever possible, as is the case with Gone stars Madeline Blue and Gee Richards, who were an engaged couple at the time of filming, both literally and figuratively, bringing to the screen the same passion and affection they share in real life.

Angie has racked up many other awards and accolades over the years, including being inducted in AVN Hall of Fame Founders Division and named as one of the adult industry’s top female power players. Angie also recently became the first member of the adult industry to speak at a Sundance Institute event, appearing at the “Creative Tensions: Sex” experimental interactive discussion event in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to the honors won by her individual films, Sssh.com was named the Best Alternative Website at the 2015 XBIZ Awards, becoming the first porn-for-women site ever to receive the award.

On top of the accolades her work has received within the adult industry, Angie’s movies also have begun to attract positive attention from the mainstream film world, gaining acceptance at film festivals such as the Los Angeles CineFest, Wendy’s Shorts and the iHolly Next Generation Indie Film Festival and was a semi-finalist at the Sweden Internal Film Festival.

In addition to running the website’s day to day operations and directing Sssh.com’s original films, Angie is also the producer of the Mindbrowse.com online discussion series, which brings together directors, performers, academics and critics to tackle some of the most incendiary and controversial topics surrounding the production of pornography.