This year’s Sydney Underground Film Festival is shaping up to be a cornucopia of ocular delights expanding far past anything you’ve seen at the event before.
With a vast array of weird and wonderful cinema from around the world on the cards, plus workshops, special events and guest speakers alongside the films themselves, there’s literally something for everyone lined up this year.
In fact, there’s almost too much to choose from. The program is literally brimming with super intriguing choices, from Lying Lotus’ disgusting masterpiece Kuso to The Evil Within, a film about an intellectually impaired man who is driven to kill by his own demonic reflection.
We recently spoke to the festival directors Kath and Stefan about what to expect from this SUFF 2017 – now they’ve given us the lowdown on what you absolutely cannot miss this year. Take a look and check out the full schedule here.
Anal fisting, cartoon cereal parties and Flying Lotus’ disgusting masterpiece: the directors of the Sydney Underground Film Festival give us the lowdown of what you need to see at this year’s festival.
Stefan’s picks:
KUSO
Apart from being near indescribable, KUSO is not just about the abject. If I had to describe this film in one word, it would be – transcendental. If you can make it through the first 3min without passing out, becoming violently angry or leaving the cinema – you will have a religious experience.
ASSHOLES
A hilarious comedy about two recovering drug addicts, Aaron and Adah, who fall in love, and relapse hard, descending into a manic spree that sees them behaving like the biggest assholes in New York City. Things really take a turn when Aaron confesses his fetish for anal fisting and Adah gives birth to a literal shit demon, sending them further down the path of decadence and depravity. The type of film that only we’re crazy enough to screen here in Sydney…
CULT OF CHUCKY
SUFF and USPHE (Universal Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) have partnered up and give Sydney a ‘killer’ gift – a FREE midnight screening of the Australian Premiere of ‘Cult of Chucky’. Everyone’s favourite killer doll is back to take an asylum full of people!
WHERE IS ROCKY II?
From the Academy Award winning co-writer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Pierre Bismuth, comes WHERE IS ROCKY II? After learning of a mysterious work by American artist Ed Ruscha, in which he is said to have made a fake rock out of resin and hid it among real ones somewhere in California’s vast Mojave Desert, Bismuth hires a team of private investigators and filmmakers to set out to find it, ingeniously exploring the nature of representation along the way.
Kath’s picks:
OPENING NIGHT (With special guests THE FOUND FOOTAGE FESTIVAL)
To properly celebrate our opening night and kick of the fest, we wanted something more interactive and fun, so we organised an evening of live comedy and video absurdity direct from the U.S. For the first time in Australia, Joe Pickett (The Onion) and Nick Prueher (Late Show with David Letterman) will debut their latest live comedy screening event “The Found Footage Festival.”
They unearth the most bizarre and hilarious footage from discarded or long-forgotten VHS tapes, then comically guide the audience through the insanity. It will be a fun night! They will also be doing a follow-up comedy show on Saturday, titled Cherished Gems, which has them digging out their favourite videos from over the past decade of their illustrious video-finding-comedy careers. I hope people don’t miss this, because it will suck to hear about it after-the-fact!
DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME
Bill Morrison’s latest experimental work, which charts the incredible discovery of 533 nitrate films from the silent era, preserved in the frozen ground of Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. We have screened a couple of Bill Morrison’s shorts over the years, and count his masterpiece DECASIA as one of my favourite films. I absolutely love the story behind his latest film and the glorious, unbelievable imagery uncovered.
CARTOON CEREAL PARTIES!
This year there’s also a focus on animation. Back by popular demand, is the SUFF BREAKFAST CARTOON CEREAL PARTY (which is all ages – bring the fam!) and then for a bit more wild, edgy, out there cartoons and animations, we are doing an UP LATE CARTOON CEREAL PARTY. Don your favourite PJs and eat a shitload of cereal at breakfast or if you are like me, at night!
