The first rule of the HUMP! film festival — as told by both the host, professional drag queen Riley Burrows, and Danny Dildo, a 1920s style animation — is “you are not allowed to pleasure yourself tonight.” 

“If you’ll look around, we are in a church,” Burrows adds. Said church had been converted into a movie theater. To be exact, it was auditorium one at the Art House movie theater in Eugene. To be even more exact, HUMP! is a pornography film festival. 

The porn, which rest assured does not hold back, is a vehicle for showcasing independent, amateur filmmakers who make adult films that show love and sex inclusive of all bodies, orientations and kinks, and do not shy away from vulnerability nor humor. HUMP! was founded in 2005 by Dan Savage, who you may know from his longtime “Savage Love” column in Eugene Weekly, among many other papers.

“We don’t tend to talk about or educate about sex,” says Megan Lipsett, standing in line before the 6:30 pm May 15 show. “I like the idea of that being destigmatized.” 

Her partner, Andy Hock, who had been to HUMP! before, adds, “One of the most powerful takeaways is how so incredibly broad sex is. I think it’s expansive to see other people’s expression of that thing, in such a playful environment. And it’s hilarious.”

The program for the night included 22 films, all around or under five minutes in length, for a total of an hour and a half. “We are going to have a very fine evening watching pornography together,” Burrows said. Then she had the audience moan in unison to get the energy up. 

The first film, which set the tone for what was to come, was Boobs, Balls and Butts; the name is self-explanatory. It was a montage of boobs, balls and butts pressed against glass, rubbing against each other, close-up and jiggling, with a cheery, if cheesy, jingle celebrating them. 

There were many films with simple setups and most of the screen time devoted to sex, usually queer, with some production value sprinkled in, but there was also an animation of anthropomorphized praying mantis mating rituals, narrated as a sort of nature documentary, with scenes of penetration, of course. It ended with the female biting the male’s head off. 

There was also one called NSFJ, of a man getting intimate with his car, a ’90s Jeep Cherokee. This was intercut with shots of his wife holding a glass of wine, looking wistfully at the garage. The last film, Deus Ex Cockina, also bordered on sketch comedy, with a lustful Christian couple who spoke in parables asking God what sorts of acts they could do without invoking his wrath. 

“No fornication,” God says, but he allows everything in between, even coming down from heaven to be the “bed jumper” while the couple tried soaking. While the couple’s denomination is never explicitly stated, soaking is said to be a thing some unmarried members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints do in order to, basically, have sex. It’s OK, because there is no movement. If, for example, you get God to come down from heaven to create the movement, that’s not on you. 

If you can’t already tell, these films were way funnier than they had any right to be; they were sex jokes but they were made with actual, full-on porn with all its associated acts, sounds and fluids on screen. Where else can you find comedy like that, especially in a theater? 

While these films are not necessarily ones to be studied in film classes, and it would be hard to call most of them profound or narratively complex, there is a realness and vulnerability in them that would be nearly impossible to replicate without the sex. Even something more like sketch comedy like Deus Ex Cockina  was still incredibly intimate.

This vulnerability was most apparent, and most to the point, in On Bonding. The film depicted a lesbian couple, one tied up in rope, you guessed it, having sex. It was a sort of vignette of their relationship, a window into a usually very private side of life. It was nervous and vulnerable, and without saying a word spoke to the deep bond that can be forged through sex. 

“I think it helps to destigmatize certain aspects of sex and sexuality, and it can provide some inspiration,” says Judy Jitsu, going by her drag name. She is a young, buff woman with a blonde mustache, wearing a white and pink sundress. She came with friends. “It’s about expressing the multitudes of experiences within ourselves. There’s no one flavor of sex, and there’s no one flavor of connecting with ourselves and other individuals, so it’s really cool to see a wide color palette.” 

The point is exhibition. Watching these diverse and sometimes taboo expressions of intimacy on the big screen in a dark room full of strangers begins to feel quite normal after the initial shock of exposure. What’s happening on screen does too. 

The HUMP! adult film festival will be back in the fall. More details can be found at HumpFilmFest.com.