YNOT – Albuquerque’s controversial Pornotopia erotic film festival has been postponed indefinitely due to a dispute with the city’s zoning department.After three years of battling zoning officials over the festival’s Guild Theater venue in the city’s Nob Hill section, Pornotopia moved its Nov. 5-7 event to the Sunshine Theater downtown. A gentlemen’s club sits just a block away, said Pornotopia Co-Director Molly Adler, so organizers figured everything was set.
Not so fast, zoning officials countered. The Sunshine is not in an area zoned for adult entertainment, either: The downtown development plan for 2010 prohibits new “adult amusements.” The gentlemen’s club that sits smack in the middle of the downtown business district operates under a “grandfather” clause, because it opened before the 2010 plan took effect. Unless Pornotopia wants to be sued — again — organizers will have to drop the porn or find another location.
According to city fathers, all four of the city’s quadrants contain areas where adult entertainment is allowed. Explicit activities are limited primarily to heavy commercial, manufacturing and industrial zones.
“Sure there are places that are zoned like that in the city, but they include mostly garages and car dealerships, and places that we could never have a film festival,” Adler told KOAT-TV, Albuquerque’s ABC affiliate. “We’re talking about a free-speech issue. How can you actually exercise your free speech, if there’s nowhere in town that we can legally have the festival?”
In the first place, Adler said, she disputes the city’s classification of the festival as “adult entertainment.” The erotic films shown during Pornotopia are art, she maintains.
For now, the show will go on at the Sunshine as planned, albeit in a vastly censored format. Calling the festival “Pornotopia-Censored,” organizers have arranged a weekend incorporating fully dressed burlesque, a drag-queen show and a lineup of comedians who promise to skewer Albuquerque’s zoning regulations.
“We, of course, think that Pornotopia should be legal at least one weekend a year,” Adler told KRQE News 13. “We should be able to show a film festival and exercise our free speech.”
She also said organizers are looking for new venues outside Albuquerque’s city limits.
