Dan Savage—the writer behind the 20-year-running Savage Love advice column, LGBTQ and political activist, and co-creator of the It Gets Better Project—had an unconventional idea back in 2005. He asked people to send him homemade dirty movies, and surprisingly, they did. In droves. His mailbox was brimming with films so hot, so hilarious, and diverse that he felt compelled to share them with the world.
Eleven years strong, the HUMP! Film Festival is still the only place to see creative, homegrown porn! The films are a cornucopia of body sizes, shapes, ages, colors, sexualities, genders, kinks, and fetishes, all under the welcoming umbrella of sex-positivity and sexual expression. First and foremost HUMP! is about acceptance, and the festival is redefining conventional “porn,” one audience at a time.
Since its inception in 2005, HUMP! has become a national phenomenon selling tens of thousands of tickets each year in the Pacific Northwest. This year—on its third international tour with 22 new films—it promises to make viewers laugh, gasp, sweat, wriggle in their seats, and genuinely get turned on. Watching these amusing, thought provoking, artistic, sometimes touching, and often outrageous films together with a theater full of friends and strangers is an uniquely strange and wonderful experience.
Savage says of the festival, “We bill HUMP! as an amateur porn festival. But it’s more than that. It’s rare for people to watch porn that takes them outside their comfort zones— it’s rare for people to watch porn that, if they were home alone in front of the computer, they wouldn’t choose to click on and watch. At HUMP! straight people watch gay porn, vanilla people watch kinky porn, gay people watch lesbian porn. And people laugh, they gasp, sometimes they cover their eyes. But at the end of every film people clap and cheer. It’s moving and wonderful and newcomers don’t expect it. The whole festival is a celebration of sexual diversity.”
The 2015 HUMP! Tour returns to Chicago—at the Music Box Theater (3733 N. Southport Ave.)—on Friday and Saturday, April 8- 9th with shows at 7 & 9:30pm, with Dan Savage in person, hosting! Advance screeners of the program will be available on a limited basis. There will also be an exciting addition to the Madison programming: on Thursday, April 7th, Dan Savage will have a live recording of his podcast “Savage Lovecast” also at the Music Box, starting at 8:30pm. Dan will answer sex questions from the audience with some help from other revered freaks and “sexperts.” For an overview of each film and tickets for both events check out: humpfilmfest.com.