As many of you know, I've been a major Dan Savage fanboy since I read two of his books, The Kid and The Commitment, back in 2008. Literally a few hours after I met him at a panel discussion in Baltimore, he posted the very first It Gets Better campaign video on YouTube. I fervently supported his recent foray into television, The Real O'Neals, until its cancellation. So when I heard his film festival was touring in BMore last weekend, I jumped at the chance to get tickets!
Established in Portland, Oregon, Dan Savage's HUMP is an underground, sex-positive film festival. Festival entries are all too erotic for mainstream competitions, and given the 5-minute time limit, they jump straight to the sex and skip that pesky character development. Performers in HUMP films are not looking for fame--just the chance to be pornstars for one night only. As such, there is zero publicity for any of the individual films and there is an extremely strict No Cell Phones policy at screenings.
Adding a tinge of Savage's trademark dark humor, every HUMP entry must incorporate two special props: an accordion and a Make America Great Again hat. 🤣🤣
HUMP! 2017
Festival Line-Up
- The Forbidden Tango 🕺🕺
- Fuck on the Mount 💑
- You've Got Tail 💁♂️🐶🐶🐶
- Birthday Boss 💑🎂
- Camping Trip 👨❤️👨🌲☀️
- Art Primo and the Rainbow Dildo 🍆🌈
- Correspondence 💑📸
- Cock-a-Pult 🍆🏀⚽️⚾️🏈
- I'm Not Poly But My Boyfriends Are 💑💑💑💑
- The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife 🐙
- Toys, Trans, and Training 👩❤️👩⚔️
- A Pervert's Guide to Avoiding Loneliness 🎼🤹♂️
- It's Fucking Complicated 💑🦍🍰
- The Little Merman 👨❤️👨🦀
- Summer Fuckation 💑✈️🚿
- Boat Daddy 👨❤️👨🛶
- Playing Scrabble 👨🏫👩🏫🤡🤢
- Fucking Boring 👩❤️👩🛁
- Breakfast in Bed 👨❤️👨🥞
- Savage Kingdom 👨❤️👨🍆
- Sexucation: Just Jizz 📺🔎💦
- Sock Puppet 🥊🎹🎤
Ironically, even though the festival's video introduction promises that all of the performers are amateurs, the first thing I see is one of my favorite fetish pornstars from the 90s, Van Darkholme, dancing The Forbidden Tango with a naked ginger. 🕺🕺 Hands down the most prolific Asian American pornstar, he's been the subject of countless internet memes alongside Billy Herrington and Mark Wolff from their all-star classic, Lords of the Lockerroom.
For me, the standout for overtly humorous entries was It's Fucking Complicated. It recounts a straight couple's first night together, as they share their respective laundry lists of off-the-wall bedroom fetishes, ranging from office roleplay to food to fursuits. It's a very relatable moment for anyone who has ever come out to their partner about any stigmatized kinks... often times, this admission can be a relationship dealbreaker.
On the other end of the spectrum, there's Playing Scrabble, a film that starts with an innocuous board game and descends into total bacchanal. For each word score, the couple acts out a related sexual scenario. The only time I had to look away from the screen was when the couple pierced themselves with needles and have sex while blood oozes out of their chest cavities. 🤢🤢 Not my cup of tea, but more power to 'em!
Winner of the coveted Best in Show award, I'm Not Poly But My Boyfriends Are is an inspirational story about a middle-aged breast cancer survivor who rejects the patriarchal ideals of female monogamy and child-rearing. She takes a different path from her sister and regularly has sex with a small group of men, all of whom know about each other and sometimes make love to her at the same time. She proves that you're never too old to be sexually adventurous and look good doing it. 💁
It's great that the BMore audience, made up mostly of heterosexual couples, was so supportive during the screening. After all, as Dan Savage says, "HUMP! is a celebration of diverse bodies, orientations, genders, and experiences." Seeing others' erotic adventures on-screen makes my sex life look SO tragically vanilla... but it also inspires me to submit a film of my own someday! 🎬🍆
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