No matter how much porn you’ve watched, it’s almost certain you haven’t seen the clips in Hump!, the touring DIY film festival coming to Cambridge this spring.
The annual festival—screening twice April 16 at the Comedy Studio in Harvard Square—packs a veritable orgy of tones and types into 24 films over 90 intermission-free minutes. The selections are all created by everyday people who, in five minutes or less, share their most intimate moments, from the kinky and hot to the romantic, funny, and strange.
A lineup released Wednesday includes everything from “Echoes of Water,” an artfully shot moment of sex by a waterfall, to “Domesticated,” about two guys going about their lives wearing pup masks.
Hump is a film festival that happens to be about sex, as opposed to porn, said Tim Neill, director of events for parent company Noisy Productions in Seattle, and “we get films every year that don’t actually feature sex at all.”
“I do have a favorite from the coming lineup, called ‘Bonk it!’ It’s essentially like the Bop It toy—like, ‘Bop it, twist it, pull it’ … with some women and a guy’s ball sack,” Neill said.
The mild torture of “Bonk It!” follows in the tradition of a notorious reel from the 2012-2013 era that would make filth director John Waters proud: “The film culminates with this guy who sticks a stick of butter up his ass, and then essentially poops the butter onto a piece of toast,” Neill recalled. “They hand the toast to a person who takes a bite out of it.”
“I tend to enjoy more of the laugh-aloud ones,” Neill said.
Festival lineups are determined by a panel of judges, who Neill said this time sifted through a record haul of 240 submissions to find the raunchy and rollicking moments—including an animated film—that would help make for another memorable year. “You have to be ruthless about what goes in,” Neill said. He read from a note sent by the editor pulling shots for the current fest’s trailer: “I feel confident saying this is one of the best collections of films we’ve ever seen in one program.”
The tour is now nearly 50 stops and tends to include trips to Berlin and Amsterdam. It’s grown significantly from the purely regional event of 2005 crafted from the VHS tapes that came in answer to a call by festival founder and syndicated “Savage Love” advice columnist Dan Savage—at the time editor of the Stranger, the alt-weekly newspaper (Noisy Productions is part of the media company that owns the Stranger).
Growing in submissions and size doesn’t mean the festival has changed. People always submit, and judges always choose, films that shock and amuse along with those that might arouse. “Dan likes to say that we tend to always have one film in each lineup that really sends the audience to the floor,” Neill said.
It can be difficult to find venues for the shocking and arousing, even if fans beg the festival to come, Neill said.
Local laws can prohibit consuming alcohol while watching adult content, for instance, Neill said. Organizers at the Wicked Queer film festival pointed Noisy to the Comedy Studio, which applied and found local officials laudably chill: Last month the License Commission chair, police and fire officials spent all of a few seconds approving the “adult screening of Hump.”
Christine Betts, manager of the Comedy Studio, said the ease of approval left her unclear what the issue might have been at the other venues, but Studio staff was excited to host. Though she hasn’t seen a Hump festival, she is a fan of Savage’s work as a columnist and his work demystifying kink and promoting sex positivity and body positivity.
His involvement caught her attention, but it also seemed like an exciting and creative use of the space, which has also expanded beyond the traditional stand-up showcases to host readings, live Dungeons and Dragons play and a dating show. “It’s not exclusively the kind of programming we’re trying to do, but definitely in the ethos of amateur performers who need a space,” Betts said of Hump.
Drag performers and comics will open and host the screenings, and Studio staff is exploring if other organizations want to table or otherwise take part in the event.
“We’re really grateful that the Comedy Studio was willing to work with us,” Neill said, “and we’re super excited to be there.”
The 2026 Hump! Film Festival is at 6:30 and 9 p.m. April 16 at The Comedy Studio, 5 John F. Kennedy St., Harvard Square, Cambridge. $24, and 21-plus.
This article was produced for BINJ.News, the independent weekly magazine published by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and is syndicated by BINJ’s MassWire news service.
