Bjorn was born in London, the son of a Russian mother and a British father. He was raised in Washington, D.C., where his father was stationed as a diplomat. He has a brother and two sisters. In an interview conducted in 1997, Bjorn stated that only one of his sisters knew of his profession as a maker of gay erotic films.[1]
After graduating from high school, Bjorn set out to travel widely, to places including Asia, India, and Europe. His career goal at the time was to be "a photographer for a magazine like National Geographic. I wanted to travel across the world and photograph people. I was really very interested in different cultures."[2]
Career
Bjorn arrived in San Francisco in 1978, where he encountered the gay community for the first time. "[I]t was all very strange to me."[2] Encouraged by the ideal of male beauty that he found in gay erotic magazines, Bjorn began working out and paying attention to his own physique. Around 1980, he was photographed by Fred Bisonnes for Mandate magazine. This was followed by two appearances in Falcon videos: Biker's Liberty (Falcon Studios 30, 1983) and The New Breed (Falcon Studios 32, 1983). Falcon chose the pseudonym Kristen Bjorn for him due to his resemblance to the Swedish tennis player Björn Borg.[3]
In the foreword to a book devoted to Kristen Bjorn's work, director William Higgins wrote that, "[in] the relatively brief history of hardcore gay videos, Kristen Bjorn has emerged unchallenged as the best director to date."[4]
In 1982 he moved to Brazil, pursuing his dream of becoming a professional photographer. In Brazil he stayed for eight years, in which he began to
make the first male nude shots, starring only Brazilian models, which he sold to American gay magazines. In 1985, his friend and mentor Fred
Bisonnes, who worked for Advocate Men magazine, invited him to submit his work to the magazine. Over the years, always under pressure from Bisonnes, he began to expand his creative space by making some softcore videos for the Advocate Men Live series.
In 1988 he directed and produced his first feature film Tropical Heatwave, which consisted of six masturbation scenes with muscular Brazilian men in
exotic settings. With this film, Bjorn establishes his own brand of himself, utilizing a multi-racial cast and naturist settings. He later directed Carnaval in Rio and Island Fever, his first hardcore movies featuring sex scenes between men, including penetrations and multiple ejaculations.
He has taken care of all aspects of his films, from production to directing to photography, creating his own recognizable style. If the first films of his lacked dialogue, apart from the narrative voice, the later dialogue was incorporated into the script. Another and main characteristic of Bjorn's films is the use of unknown models, predominantly muscular and with a strong masculinity, without caring if they identify as heterosexual or
homosexual but simply willing to participate in male sex scenes.
2007 Barcelona International Erotic Film Festival Heatgay Award winner – Best Film (El Rancho – Kristen Bjorn), Best Director (El Rancho – Kristen Bjorn Productions), and Best Script (El Rancho – Kristen Bjorn Productions)[5]
2010 XBIZ Award nomination – Gay Studio of the Year (Kristen Bjorn Production)[6]
Jamoo; Bjorn, Kristen (1997). The Films of Kristen Bjorn. Laguna Hills, CA: Companion Press. ISBN978-1-889138-00-8. This book offers a reliable account of Kristen Bjorn's life, views, and work until 1997. It consists of a series of interviews with Bjorn himself.
Further reading
The Films of Kristen Bjorn, by Jamoo. With a Foreword by William Higgins (Laguna Hills, Calif.: Companion Press, 1997), ISBN978-1-889138-00-8.
Men of the World (Berlin: Bruno Gmünder, 2002), ISBN978-3-86187-241-2. A collection of photographs by Kristen Bjorn.
