After Supreme Court Win, Pornotopia Is Back In Albuquerque

ALBUQUERQUE, NM—As AVN has previously reported, the Pornotopia Film Festival, sponsored by women-run adult store Self Serve Sexuality Resource Center, which festival has been on hiatus for the past four years due to a fine levied upon its venue, the Guild Theater in the city's Nob Hill section, resurfaced this past weekend with roughly nine hours of hard- and softcore action that managed to avoid the "sanitized, silicone-heavy imagery of mainstream pornography," according to festival director Matie Fricker.

"Most porn is pretty awful, and we're the first one to admit it," Fricker told KASA News.  "But to quote Annie Sprinkle, who is a wonderful sexologist, 'The answer to bad porn isn't no porn. It's good porn.'"

While the titles that were shown beginning last Friday at 4 p.m. are not available, Fricker said that the films would be compilations of scenes that were submitted to the festival committee, wich were used to create "a mixtape of the world's hottest porn." Fricker's business partner, Molly Adler, said that the offerings included works from "Independent filmmakers, woman filmmakers, queer filmmakers, lesbian gay bisexual trans," and the festival itself was divided into blocks that showcased each genre.

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that the one-night-per-year annual event did not mean that the Guild Theater was therefore an "adult amusement establishment," which type of business must be licensed by the city and subject to restrictive zoning.

Nonetheless, the festival coordinators did their best to make it as friendly a venue as possible, with the Santa Fe Reporter noting that a "perv patrol" would be "periodically checking the aisles to make sure viewers weren't doing anything naughty."

"We really try to create a safe space for everyone," Fricker said.