Critics Adult Film Association


The Critics Adult Film Association was a New York-based group of East Coast adult sex film critics, which bestowed awards upon those working in pornographic film during the 1980s. The awards were first presented in 1981, honoring the movies of the previous year. Talk Dirty to Me, a sex comedy starring John Leslie, who won Best Actor, was voted best film of 1980. Samantha Fox was the first Best Actress, winning for her role in This Lady Is A Tramp, another sex comedy.
Amanda By Night, an adult crime-drama and Roommates, also a drama, would become CAFA's most-honored movies, with the latter being presented with seven awards in 1983, including Best Director and Best Actress. Amanda By Night scooped six awards the previous year in a ceremony "held at the famed Copacabana": Best Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Editing.
The CAFA and Adult Film Association of America awards were considered the major adult film awards of the Golden Age of Porn. By 1985, sex news magazine Cheri declared: "Held at the Silver Lining, a snazzy little bistro on the West Side's Restaurant Row, the fifth-annual Critics Adult Film Awards was a gentle reminder that porn films can be measured against standards other than the Peter Meter."
The seventh CAFA Awards were presented May 27, 1987 in Manhattan. The association seems to have faded away after that, as did the New York-based adult film industry, overtaken by the X-Rated Critics Organization and its Heart-On Awards, which had first been presented two years earlier and which were based in California, the new centre of porn production.
In 1986 all three awards programs chose the same Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress.

CAFA Awards

The trophies were called the Critics Adult Film Award and each was inscribed with the year the award was being given for, on a gold-plated round icon with decorative edges on a wooden base.
In 1987, Cinema Blue magazine described the voting as a two-stage process: "CAFA President Jack Shugg and officers Steffani Martin, Colette Connor and Will H. Jarvis, aided and abetted by the members of CAFA...mail out two ballots to the New York porn critics. On the first ballot, the critics make five choices for best movies and performers in each category. The ballots are then mailed back and the officers and their assistants count them. The choices with the most votes are then listed on a second ballot and again mailed to the critics who make one final choice in each category. These votes are once again tabulated and the movie or performer in each category with the most votes becomes the winner."
Winners are listed below by the year in which the awards presentation was held, not by year the award was for, which was the previous year.

Best Film

Best Actress

YearActress
1981Samantha Fox – This Lady Is A Tramp
1982Veronica Hart – Amanda By Night
1983Veronica Hart – Roommates
1984Sharon Mitchell – Sexcapades
1985Colleen Brennan – Trinity Brown
1986Gloria Leonard – Taboo American Style
1987Sheri St. Claire – Sweet Revenge

Best Actor

Best Supporting Actress

YearActress
1981Vanessa del Rio – Dracula Exotica
1982
1983
  • Lisa De Leeuw – The Blonde Next Door
  • Sharon Mitchell – Blue Jeans
    • 1984Sharon Mitchell – Night Hunger
    1985Colleen Brennan – Good Girl, Bad Girl
    1986Sheri St. Claire – Corporate Assets
    1987
  • Kay Parker – Careful He May Be Watching
  • Tasha Voux – The Oddest Couple

    • Best Supporting Actor

    Best Director

    Best Erotic Scene

    YearScene
    1981
    1982Games Women Play
    1983
    1984Silk Satin and Sex
    1985
  • Suze Randall's Stud Hunters
  • Private Teacher
    • 1986Passage Through Pamela
    1987The Oddest Couple

    Other Categories

    Like the Academy Awards, CAFA also honored the best in various production categories. For example, at the awards show held in 1985, Every Woman Has a Fantasy scooped up cinematography and music awards, Raw Talent polished off top honors for editing prowess and Sandy Amsterdam's production design and Talk DIrty to Me III netted make-up and costuming kudos for Traci Lords' mermaid tail.
    However, unlike the Academy Awards, CAFA also presented awards in categories specific to the pornographic movie industry, such as Best Group Scene, bestowed in 1987 to with Vanessa del Rio and seven studs. With the advent of pornography on video, a Best Adult Video award was created, won by Candida Royalle for Urban Heat in 1985 and Christine's Secret in 1987.
    The annual Gerard Damiano Special Achievement Award, named after the producer, writer and director of the 1972 cult classic Deep Throat, went to actress Georgina Spelvin in 1982, Erica Eaton, publicist and former CAFA chairperson, in 1985 and Gloria Leonard in 1987.