Before we get to the winners...
Showing up to host HUMP! less than 24 hours after Donald Trump won the election was difficult. Like everyone at On the Boards that night—like the majority of Americans who voted on November 8—I was still reeling from the results. But after welcoming everyone to HUMP!, and after walking everyone through our three rules (no cell phones, no assholes, have fun), and after apologizing for all the "Make America Great Again" hats featured in this year's films*, I was happy to be in a theater full of people watching porn and not, say, at home in bed with the lights out and the covers pulled up over my head.
Like I said to the crowd that night (someone taped it, here's a partial transcript):
"Don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't be here, at a porn festival, at a time like this. I am an old fag. And I was there in the '80s when my friends started dropping dead and we organized and we marched and we donated and we fought. But we also partied. We danced, we had fun, we watched porn, and we fucked. And all the partying and dancing and music and laughter and theater and art and porn and all that fucking—it revived us, it reminded us what we were fighting for, and it kept our spirits up for the fight. The other benefit of all the fun we were having while we fought for our lives? It drove our enemies crazy. They wanted us to be miserable. They wanted us on the floor, too depressed and distraught to leave the house. And when they saw us dancing, when they heard us making music, when they saw us creating art and making theater and watching porn, when they realized we were still fucking, it confounded them. That's when they realized we were not going to be easily defeated. We weren't going down without a fight and we weren't going down without a party."
We are in for another long fight, but we have to make time for pleasure and art and porn and music and dancing and fucking—because it will keep us sane and drive them
nuts.Okay! The winners:
THE 2016 HUMP! AWARDS
Best Sex
Fuck on the Mount
($2,000)Runner-Up: Summer Fuckation
($1,000)Best Humor
Birthday Boss
($2,000)Runner-Up: It's Fucking Complicated
($1,000)Best Kink
Playing Scrabble
($2,000)Runner-Up: Breakfast in Bed
($1,000)Best in Show
I'm Not Poly, but My Boyfriends Are
($5,000)Jury Award: Fucking Boring
($1,000)The HUMP! Awards are decided by audience ballot with the exception of the Jury Award, which is awarded by the HUMP! Jury.
More than 20,500 people went to HUMP! over two weeks in Seattle, Olympia, and Portland, and the HUMP! 2016 program will tour North America starting in January. Unlike other short film festivals, there is no charge to submit a film to HUMP! Every filmmaker whose film tours with HUMP!—our little porn festival played in 30 cities last year—gets a percentage of every ticket sold. A portion of the proceeds from HUMP! is donated to Planned Parenthood. HUMP! supports Planned Parenthood and so should you.
* About those hats: Every year, when we do the call for submissions, we invite the filmmakers to include a couple of random props to show they made the film just for this festival. HUMP! filmmakers have fun working the props into their films and HUMP! audiences have fun spotting them. This year's props were the accordion and "Make America Great Again" hats. In our defense: We did the call for submissions a year ago—back when no one thought Donald Trump could possibly win the GOP nomination, much less the fucking election. 
