Photo courtesy of Lauren Max Winkelman
By Brooklin Pigg
Last September, over 150 porn submissions were sent to the offices of The Stranger, a newspaper in Seattle. 21 were chosen for the 14th annual HUMP! Film Festival, which is returning to Bellingham for the second time on Feb. 15 and 16.
Stranger editor Dan Savage started the festival in 2005. Marketing and Promotions Director Caroline Dodge remembered them joking about making a festival where people submit dirty videos and it has since turned into reality.
HUMP!’s site describes the videos as “created by people who aren’t porn stars but want to be one for a weekend.” With the objective of sex positivity, the porn selected is filled with “different body types, shapes, ages, colors, sexualities, genders, kinks, and fetishes.”
The criteria is that they are under 5 minutes and, for extra credit points, can contain specific items. This year: Justin Trudeau, Jenga and jumper cables.
“We try to make them sort of silly and creative. Maybe a little bit weird. Maybe something that’s kind of sexy,” Dodge said.
The submissions are then filtered through by a jury.
“We all sit around in a room with a committee that really runs the gamut of men, women, all genders, trans, kinky, vanilla. I mean, everybody,” Dodge said. “We make sure we have a really nice mixture of people in the room and we all give our vote equally, then Dan has the final say.”
There are categories for best sex, best kink, best humor and best in show. Audience members vote at the festival and prizes are given up to thousands of dollars, Dodge said.
This festival has come to Bellingham once before in 2013. They typically stay around Seattle and Portland, but Dodge said they had a lot of people from Bellingham drive down to Seattle to attend, so they decided to extend it this year.
“We’re selling tickets really well, so we’re really excited and happy to bring it there,” Dodge said.
Dodge refers to Savage telling the audience before the screenings that they’re “‘going to see stuff tonight that, if you opened your own computer to watch some porn, you would definitely not click on.’”
“But that’s sort of the great thing about HUMP! You see things that you would never have expected,” Dodge said. “You gain empathy and new understanding of how people love and lust and I think that’s completely unique. I don’t think there’s anything like that out there.”
The HUMP! Film Festival will be playing at Pickford Film Center Feb. 15 at 7:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. and again on Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. Tickets can be found here for $18.