Sex Of the Nation Address

Sex of the Nation Address (SONA) is a one-day celebration and exploration of sexuality, kink, queerness, gender, and embodied joy in South Africa. Through provocative film screenings, panels, performances, and a curated speed date experience, SONA invites South Africans to explore, reflect and connect around pleasure, politics, and the body.

Expect:

• Three completely uncensored screenings with films spanning erotic surrealism, political satire, trans joy, disability and desire
• Panels on BDSM, sex work, sex in the media, spirituality and self-love
• A workshop, speed dating, and open-hearted conversation

Program:

Screening 1: The Body is a Spell

From trans joy to disabled power, mythic kink to absurd political lust, this screening invites you to witness the body not as an object, but as a ritual, a revolt, a reimagining.

• Gamétes Masturbation as gender euphoria, joy as defiance, a trans utopia of support and spectacle.
• CripPleasurePower Intimacy beyond normativity, where disability becomes a site of erotic truth and creative potential.
• Ikaros Reborn Myth becomes a leather-clad ritual. Love and submission rewrite the Ikaros story with tenderness and kink.
• Scatto in Avanti V. A photo shoot flipped inside out. Who gets to be seen? Who’s in control of the frame?
• How to Eat a Whole Watermelon and Get Away With It Satire, statesmanship, sex - a surreal slice of political absurdism.

Talk: Setting power aside: intimacy that aspires to uncentre power from the experience

- by Sunga Konji

Screening 2: Orgasms and Other Celestial Events

Some desires are too big for one body. Or one planet.

This screening drifts through the surreal and the sacred, where lesbian space operas collide with suburban vibrator comas, and pleasure slips between.

• Baise Platine - Baise Platine is an ode to libertarian gay utopia, to the libertarian euphoria of our plural sexualities, where bodies rub against each other until everything is consumed.
• She and Her Good Vibrations - A woman spirals into pleasure and isolation. A suburban fever dream of vibe addiction.
• Friendzone - Yearning, intimacy, and misfires. Heartbreak wrapped in awkwardness.
• Dancing Bodies - Soft skin, collective rhythm, sensual kinship.
• Exxxstacy - A cake. A fantasy. A triptych of erotic dreams served hot and surreal.
• Lesbian Darkroom Fisting Operetta on Venus - A divine quest involving tentacle femmes, celestial dildos, and anti-gentrification lesbian heroes.
• Summer Night’s Fantasy - On a hot summer night, Mila drifts into a sensual fantasy that takes her beyond the stars.

Panel: SA’s Sex Life - Spirituality, Expression & BDSM as Acts of Self-Love

South Africa’s relationship with sex is layered. Sacred. Censored. Stigmatised. Sensational. This conversation peels back the sheets to explore it all.

Join us for a panel on how South Africans are claiming their sexuality: spiritually, politically, and personally. We’ll talk kink as a means of transformation and honesty. Pleasure as protest. Self-love as a subversive act.

Hosted by:

• Tshegofatso from Hedone - Facilitator, healer and advocate of collective care and sensual liberation.

Featuring:

• Leah Jazz - Founder of Eden, exploring eroticism and embodiment
• Mistress Nix (Nicole Ditsie) - Somatic practitioner, Professional Dominatrix and Kink educator
• Siphumeze Khundayi - Healer, art maker, creative director of HOLAAfrica!

Screening 3: Flesh & Freedom

This screening showcases South African filmmakers reclaiming softness, power and play.

• Slut Club
• Ungasunge moto iwe | Can you tie down a flame?
• Womxn: Working

Panel: Selling & Showing Sex in South Africa

What does it mean to put sex on display in South Africa - legally, politically, personally? Who gets to profit from it and who gets punished for it?

In this long overdue panel, we’re bringing together people who sell sex, people who show sex, and people who create space for the stories in between. We’ll explore what it’s like to navigate visibility, censorship, creativity and consent in a country where sex is sold every day, but sex workers are criminalised. Where sex is shown on screens and timelines, but still carries deep stigma.

Expect an honest, fierce and necessary conversation on power, pleasure, performance and the politics of sex in SA today.

We're not just talking about sex, we’re talking about who gets to own the narratives.

Featuring:

• Zoey Black - filmmaker
• Shanelle Jewnarain - filmmaker
• Tiffany Mugo - Writer, speaker, and co-founder of HOLAAfrica!
• Yonela Sinqu - Journalist and Sisonke representative

Hosted by:

• Tash Casey - Filmmaker and creative extraordinaire
• Jessica van der Berg - Curator and SONA babe

Mistress Nix: A Somatic Kink Exhibition

Experience Mistress Nix as she weaves a BDSM scene rooted in consent, care, pleasure, sovereignty, liberation and tenderness. A sacred container holds both the muse and the viewer in gentle embrace. You are invited to witness a moment where softness and strength intertwine, where pleasure and pain ride the knife's edge. This delicious unfolding is a feast for the senses, a vivid interplay of light and shadow, pleasure and pain, dripping in embodied connection and trust.

Speed Date / Meet & Greet

SONA is a sex-positive event. All bodies, genders, sexualities and stories are welcome. Consent is our baseline. Curiosity is encouraged.

You do not need to identify as queer to be welcome in this space. This space is for every body and every experience, so long as you come with openness, respect and enough self awareness to manage yourself, you are welcome.

Come through. Be long. This is yours too.

Profits from this event will go to SWEAT.