Amateur porn has always been a tricky proposition at best, since the majority of it is very, very bad. Granted, even the most professional porn usually barely rises to the level of adequate filmmaking, but up until the digital revolution, most of the amateur stuff usually didn't try to move beyond setting up a cheap video camera and going to town. But since 2005, Dan Savage has curated the Hump! Film Festival, in which people of all inclinations are invited to make their own five-minutes-or-less porn film, preferably with a little imagination and wit. Savage has picked 18 of the best shorts from over the years, covering just about every permutation of sexuality (at least, those that doesn't involve children, animals, and/or feces). Savage calls Hump! a "celebration of sexual diversity," saying that "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." Presented in person by Savage, some of the cheer-worthy highlights include the deceptively simple "Go Ahead, Pee!", the puppet-heavy "Mythical Proportions," the suspensefully squirmy "Fun with Fire," and the hilarious time-travel yarn "Go Fuck Yourself," which goes as well as you might expect it to.
Tags: Night&Day, Highlights, Dan Savage, Roxie Theater