Since 2005, Dan Savage’s HUMP! Film Festival has been bringing a new and unusual type of porn to the people: homegrown, artisanal, ultra-heady pornography. In this day in age, we’re steering away from the mass produced, the artificial and the generic, well, everything—so why not do it with our porn? We are the Millennials, hear us roar. We want to buy local. Give us our small batch porn.
The HUMP! Film Festival is a contest for the most creative, hottest and unusual styles of pornography, made by people just like you and me. All of the submissions are less than five minutes long, so if something’s making you squeamish—or horny—hang tight, it’ll be over soon. The winners are hand selected and taken on the road, touring around the country and showing at indie theaters from Seattle to Philly. This hand curated menagerie of smut is funny, touching (hehe), endearing, sexy and—at times—even educational. And, while seeing closeup shots of genitals on the big screen is sometimes slightly jarring, HUMP! is entertaining as hell.
HUMP! features all sorts of curious kinks, hilarious scenarios, naughty animation, colorful music videos, gay, straight, queer, trans, black, white and brown sex. Mouth stuff, hand stuff, genital stuff, butt stuff. S&M, BDSM, bondage, hot wax, fire, indoor sex, outdoor sex, twosomes, threesomes, fivesomes, whatever. Stuff you couldn’t dream up if you tried. Stuff you’d already dreamt up and tried not to. HUMP! is ultra sex positive, encouraging all walks of life to flaunt it, be proud of who they are and show us how it’s done.
Each year, HUMP! has a few suggested themes that are reoccurring throughout all of the videos and this year, those were hula hoops and Mike Huckabee’s book Gods, Guns, Grits, And Gravy (because poking fun at Republicans is fun for this festival—the more vulgar, the better). Highlights from this year’s HUMP! included an erotic reading (all the while trying to keep a straight face) of the aforementioned book, while something sexy was clearly going on beneath the table. A film entitled Cuckold realistically portrayed just how emotionally complicated having a threesome is. Film Bonoir depicted a black and white dick-puppet private investigative drama (googly eyes and all). The Collector was a deadpan comedy skit about an all-American, regular guy who loves to garden… and who collects cum (this film could’ve used subtitles, as your could barely make out the dialogue over the roaring laughter of the audience).
My personal favorite was arguably the strangest, entitled Lube Dispenser. There were animal masks, plastic bags over heads and outfits made of ACE bandages… and fisting. Level Up was a Mario-inspired journey through an empowering feminist video game, where a couple of fairies fought and defeated the patriarchy, which led to a really hot group sex scene. And there was a Dick Song that will probably be stuck in everyone’s heads while they’re at work all week, silently laughing to themselves while recalling the Peter Gabriel-style music video that had accompanied it.
But the most interesting film, by far, was called Blown. It showed two transgender guys giving each other head and discussing the process of their transitions, their acceptance of their bodies and how it pays off to find someone that you’re comfortable sharing yourself with—someone who is understanding and who cares about you and your pleasure. It was like an educational public service announcement: we are trans, these are our bodies, here are the answers to your questions and this is what it looks like. Really insightful stuff that you wouldn’t ordinarily encounter elsewhere.
Big thanks to Dan Savage and the HUMP! crew, for (literally) giving everyone a platform to fuck on. And thanks to the Oriental, for giving HUMP! a venue to fuck in. Orgasms and boobies aside, HUMP! is important because it rehumanizes sex. Webcam girls and internet porn desensitizes us to the fact that real people are out there fucking all the time, and that’s hotter than the scripted stuff. Watching all that fake sex may make us cum—but it also makes us self-conscience, all too aware of our adorable flaws and our endearing awkwardness. But HUMP! embraces those little foibles and normalizes them. We’re all doing it, and we’re not perfect. And that’s okay.
I just saw Hump in Vermont, and I was so disappointed. The promotions billed it as so diverse, with real people. ??? Do they show different clips in different places? There was one black man, who didn’t speak, one asian man, who didn’t speak, not a single overweight person, every woman was shaved/waxed and hairless (GRRRRR), and there was an inordinate focus on gigantic cocks ejaculating. I am a sex-positive person, and I was disappointed. I didn’t see any of the plus size women or people of color that were portrayed in ads for this, though you did a fair job representing non-hetero folks. It’s a start, but if you really want to show ‘real’ people, you can do better.