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Three Portlands Plays Itself, 1981
Edward Thompson (1945 - 1991)
Single channel colour film, duration 55 minutes
Three Portlands Plays Itself is a pornographic film which follows a young parahuman drifter (Teddy Halsted) as he hitchhikes through the eponymous anomalous enclave, experiencing numerous sexual encounters with other parahumans of varying genders. Thompson seamlessly combines scripted and non-scripted elements (including pornographic scenes involving non-actors) into the film, making Portlands a kind of sex-based travelogue of the city-state.
New York-based Thompson aimed to contrast the repressive attitudes of his home city with the then-safe-haven of Three Portlands. When the film initially screened at The Womb (New York's oldest anart cinema, in the summer of 1981) it would have been most audiences' first time seeing queer, inter-parahuman love on the big screen. Most Western parahuman pornography up to that point was heterosexual and made solely for non-anomalous consumers in mind, and rarely, if ever, featured two parahuman partners.
After its limited release in New York and Los Angeles, queer parahumans flocked to Three Portlands, forming communes and tight-knit communities within the city-state. Via the power of word of mouth, Three Portlands was now the-place-to-be for any young parahuman, queer or not, looking for community.
However, due to increased corporate pressure and urban sprawl, most of these communities were displaced and destroyed by the early 90s, with most of the queer expats from the early 80s moving back to the American cities from which they came. This brief boom of queer parahuman activity in Three Portlands left a permanent mark on the city's cultural and artistic scenes, but the city quickly lost its reputation of being free and safe for queer parahumans. Recent studies suggest it is now on par to most un-Veiled American cities.
Thompson, who himself briefly lived in Three Portlands, was an important pioneer in creating pornographic films made by and for parahuman audiences, with Portlands being the only pornographic film in the permanent collection at the National Museum of Anomalous Modern Art. Thompson passed away in 1991 at the age of 46 due to AIDS-related complications in his home city of New York.
