ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – An Albuquerque zoning code threatened to shut down Pornotopia, the city’s first XXX film festival on Friday. According to a recent report, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) jumped into the fray with the festival organizers and the city's Code Enforcement Division, and the show was able to go on at the last minute.
“They can proceed with the festival; there's nothing we can do to stop it,” City Attorney Bob White told the Albuquerque Tribune. “The issue is, does having this festival make them an adult-amusement establishment under the provision of the zoning code?”
The three-day event at Nob Hill's Guild Theatre presented what organizer Molly Adler called “high-brow pornography” and a handful of documentaries about porn. Selections included Annie Sprinkle's HERstory of Porn and Amazing World of Orgasms, S.I.R. Video's dykefest How To Fuck in High Heels, Becky Goldberg's feminist porn doc Hot And Bothered, the BDSM-themed The Pain Game and the '70s XXX revival Disco Dolls in Hot Skin.
City officials claimed that they had received complaints from neighbors and advised the owners of the Guild about several sections of the city code that prohibit the screening of explicit images.
The Guild Theater, now primarily an art house cinema, was once a porn theatre in the early 1970s. If the city chooses to enforce the ordinance, the Guild could incur thousands of dollars in fines for showing the adult titles.
ACLU Executive Director Peter Simonson said that shutting down the festival would be a violation of the First Amendment.
“They are doing a service to the community,” Simonson told the Tribune, “and they shouldn't be prohibited from presenting this entertainment.”
“We are trying to tell the world, here's an alternative to the sleaze. That's a serious code of ethics we stand by,” Adler told the Tribune. “For the zoning code to throw something at the Guild, like `We're wrapping you up and throwing you in with the strip joints,' I think that's a problem.”
Guild owner Peter Conheim said the movies are being screened during the festival are non-exploitative, and should be seen as erotica.
Conheim and Adler, who also runs a sex shop in Nob Hill called Self Serve, said they are planning on circulating a petition to show community support for the festival. Neither of them said their businesses have gotten complaints from neighbors.
Legal
- By
