Hump! film fest proves there’s more to porn

By VERONICA REARDON Your Weekend Columnist

Lately I’ve gotten in the habit of saving Facebook events I think look interesting instead of RSVPing to them. Usually I’ll save something and then forget about it until after it happened, or maybe I won’t remember it at all.

But fortunately last week I didn’t have a lot to do over the weekend, and so I was looking to see what was happening in Baltimore. I decided to check my many saved events to see if any were actually worth going to. Lo and behold, there it was: Hump! playing at Gallery 788 in Hampden.

Hump! is a dirty film festival that originated on the West Coast around Portland and Seattle. And yes, by dirty films I do mean porn.

It’s not what you might ordinarily think of as porn, though. Instead of professional porn stars, it’s made by anyone who wants to submit a video, and ordinary people become temporary porn stars when the films are shown.

In order to respect the privacy of the people who submitted videos, they asked that we not take any pictures or videos in the event. There was also a message by Dan Savage, the man behind the festival, at the beginning, which managed to be funny, sex positive and respectful all at once.

The videos were not conventional porn. For some this was because they was more artistic than usual — basically as much attention was paid to the aesthetics and storyline of the film as the sex.

Others were outright hilarious, featuring things such as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony conducted by a penis and a rap song about watching too much porn. There was a song about twincest too.

My personal favorites included one called The Grocer in which a grocer takes an unhealthy interest in the produce in his store and the viewer is taken into a vision of an orgy in which people wearing body paint and vegetable costumes play the fruit. Another good one, The Glory Hole, was a sweet story about how two old men, together today, met when they were young.

Altogether, Hump! was a great experience! And they’re taking submissions from Baltimore for another week, so if you want to take a shot at being featured, it’s a thing that can happen. (Happy humping?)

Information about Hump! can be found on the Hump! website: humptour.boldtypetickets.com.