Words by Kyle Turner
There’s so much to hump that the HUMP! Festival, Dan Savage’s iconic film festival for amateur pornographers the world over, has transitioned from being an annual festival to a bi-annual festival. Part Two, which features another 25 short films, ramps up the excitement, sexiness, and, well, thrusts.
From songs about asking consent for piss play, to ambitious shorts filmed in thermal vision and still photography, HUMP! 2024 Part 2 is exemplary in its goals to push the boundaries of how sex, intimacy, desire, and pleasure are filmed. Here are five shorts you should check out.
The Pizza Guy
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A hot pizza guy does a door delivery and opens to find another handsome man on the other side. In a flash, they’re naked, pressing tongue on tongue, bathed in blue and magenta lighting. “The Pizza Guy” revives and revamps the classic pornographic trope, gives it a dash of subversion, but primarily succeeds on its attention to the chemistry between leads JC Hunt and Brad Sparks. The pair appear to be deeply in tune with one another’s bodies, and the lavender glow accentuates their attraction, highlighting strings of saliva from mouth to mouth and cock and hole.
Horned
There were a number of horror themed entries in this bloc, and one wonders if this is an inflection point in the relationship between sex and horror not only in the broader mainstream culture, but also in a way that trickles down into porn. “Horned” follows a live streamer (Ben Johnson) just before he tries out an urban legend. Say “Horny Tory” three times, or so this story goes, and she’ll appear to “fuck your brains out”. It’s a clever merging of sex, the digital era, and horror mythology, concisely and astutely conveying both classic horror cliches, updated for a contemporary feel.
Veronica
The young women, one holding a Bolex, are in for a hell of a time as they explore an abandoned barn with the hope of shooting their own amateur video (on Super8 no less!) and becoming stars. Another classic setup, but rendered with surprising texture for setting and place. In a post X/Pearl world, it’s easy to see why the location and outline would be of interest, and the short delivers on its winking sense of humor as well as its shadowy and refined production values.
Pansexual
Sex is timeless, and perhaps nevermore so in the HUMP! Festival than in Laura Leonard and Lance Forsberg’s “Pansexual”. Taking the Greek mythological figure of Pan, the satyr with the top half of a human and the bottom half (and horns) of a goat, “Pansexual” presents a whimsical cat and mouse game between Leonard’s human and Forsberg’s Pan. The trickster god interrupts her picnic, but when she finally gets him back, they fuck in the lightly wooded area. Needless to say, crackers and grapes aren’t the only thing getting eaten on the green grass that day.
Family Affair
No, “Family Affair” is not an incest-play story (not really at least), but it is one of the funniest shorts in the group. While pregnant Sam is feeling horny, she assures her partner Dick that he doesn’t have to fuck her if he doesn’t want to. He agrees, despite a pressing anxiety nightmare that, when he fucks his partner, his dick is bonking the baby (played by adult Baby J) in the face. It’s an amusing absurdity rooted in the real anxiety and friction between wanting to pleasure your partner and worrying about their body in the process (consent also seemed to be a running theme in the bloc). “Family Affair”, in addition to good performances, adds both humor and a bit of pathos to a very solid lineup of programming.
Honorable Mentions
“MacroGasm”, “Pussy Party”, and “Full Body Blush” offer truly inventive visions of sex and sexuality through extreme close-up cinematography, still/stop motion black and white photography, and thermal vision, respectively. They challenge our ideas of what sex on screen can look like. “Manifesting” cues us in on how AI is changing the way we think about sex and what we allow technology to access about ourselves. “Bunny x Gator” features some truly wild neon drenched night cinematography in the swamplands. And “Cumcubus,” another horror offering, presents a very funny mix of genre and style, with elements of fantasy and video gaming.
Stream all 25 short films now at humpfilmfest.com.