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In this issue...
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Some pics...
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The Vanguard, Launch venue
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The Vanguard, Launch venue
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The Festival is fast approaching and things are getting frantic for the SUFF team.
Due to many last minute requests, the entry deadline has been extended until Friday July 27th! We are also running a MySpace promo, but more on this later...
The Launch Party is happening next month (pics next issue!), a pre-festival screening of the films made by the SUFF team is also happening very soon, Jay Katz's SUFF screening is coming up a week before the Festival and there are also several post-festival events lined up, including a lecture by Megan Spencer on Underground Documentary (to be held at Sydney College of the Arts). For those of you in Australia, tune in to TVS for regular programs of SUFF films (check www.tvs.org.au).
Plus, June is Sydney Film Festival month - I went incognito, (huddling amongst the soup sippers) to review eleven films at the festival.
Keep in touch via email: siouxzi@suff.com.au and keep sending in those film entries! (until July 27 anyway...)
Love from the Sydney Underground Film Festival team.
P.S We succumbed to the global conglomerate that is myspace: so let’s be friends at: www.myspace.com/sydneyundergroundfilmfest
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FESTIVAL LAUNCH
You are cordially invited to:
THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF THE 2007 SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL
Date: Tuesday July 31st 2007
Venue: The Vanguard (King Street, Newtown)
Entry is invite only or with Festival Pass!
Help us celebrate the launch of the inaugural Sydney Underground Film Festival by joining us for some fun, films, free food, drinks, live music, and entertainment.
Program highlights will be revealed, you can buy the limited edition t-shirt, buy festival passes at the concession price, try the festival's own cocktail 'S.U.F.F the consequences', and partake in the underground film community spirit by supporting this exciting new festival!
For an invite please email: info@suff.com.au
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FESTIVAL PASSES ON SALE NOW!
Get your festival pass now at an earlybird rate of $55
($50 concession).
In addition to the festival pass, you also receive a limited edition festival pack, which includes a unique engraved collector dog tag on chain, a SUFF badge and SUFF collector card) for each pass purchased!
Festival passes are great value - you get to see every film at the festival for this one price of $55 - which means a saving of over $65!
Festival passes entitle the card holder entry to all four nights of the festival (including the opening night worth $30 alone) plus free entry to peripheral events including the official launch at The Vanguard (King St, Newtown) on
Tuesday 31st July. Just click on the tickets page of the festival website to purchase tickets!
http://www.sydneyundergroundfilmfestival.com/tickets.html
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SUFF/ MYSPACE COMPETITION - FREE ENTRY!
Sydney Underground Film Festival and MYSPACE are pleased to announce a special CALL FOR ENTRIES for the 2007 Festival!
We are searching for the most original, boundary-breaking, subversive short film (under 5 mins) to open the 2007 festival. The winner will also benefit from great exposure as the MYSPACE FEATURED FILMMAKER! This is a great chance for anyone who may not be able to stretch their budget to pay for the regular SUFF entry fee...(being filmmakers ourselves, we understand!)
You have from now until 27th July 2007 to enter. The comp is free to enter and is open to filmmakers worldwide!
Just visit www.myspace.com/sydneyundergroundfilmfest for more info.
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CINEFONDATION - CANNES COVERAGE WITH BEN FERRIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF SYDNEY FILM SCHOOL
Cinefondation at the Cannes Film Festival is an annual competition for film schools around the world - each film school may enter just one outstanding work from the current or previous year’s student body of work. Ben Ferris, the Executive Director of Sydney Film School (and also writer/ director with Sydney-based production company Anvil Films) attended this year’s Cinefondation, and Siouxzi was lucky enough to catch up with the charming Ben to ask him a few questions about his time there...
S: I’m interested to hear about the overall atmosphere while you were there - any exceptional moments...
B: I think my time there is best summarized by one moment in particular: I was standing on an incredibly crowded street - I looked over to my left and saw a girl on the ground in tears, then somewhere near her a group of guys is celebrating about something, then at the same time on my right, another guy is taking a swing at a woman... I think this sums up the hysteria that is Cannes.
Everything is so truncated - 30,000 people all in one place, all with their own objectives to pursue in such a limited amount of time. There’s 4000 features in the Cannes marketplace each year and only 200 will find a buyer. It is an exercise in humility a lot of people could benefit from... everyone there has this manic feeling that Cannes is ‘happening’ wherever they’re not.
S: Can you tell us a little about the Cinefondation shorts you saw there?
B: Well I saw four of the award-winners - three of the four were very self-assured on the filmmakers’ behalf. There was this sense that the story would take as long to tell as the story required it to be told. They showed a confidence in knowing when certain frames could be held - a sense of stillness that allowed for drama to work.
Personally I thought the strongest was from the Korean Academy of Film Arts (Reunion, Hong Sung-Hoon). A simple story of the reunion of a man with his wife and daughter is told through the choreography of body language, not through dialogue. The mother and daughter say nothing when the father leaves again as they have nothing to say to each other. The mise-en-scene is particularly beautiful and the choice of shots, particularly the long take in bird’s eye view during the farewell is bold. The film is also brave as it exists in the limbo land between the magical and realism. The sense of the magical is introduced through the landscape and situation the characters are in, but there is realism in the performances and design. There is a lot of stillness in the film and in this stillness there is room for imagination and character empathy.
S: So was this film a particular stand-out for experimentation in the competition?
B: Reunion is my favourite kind of film - bold and trying new things but not at the expense of drama and character development. It takes a confident director to resolve all drama in the most climactic scene but completely remain at a distant through a bird’s eye view shot.
S: What was your impression of Cannes’ general attitude towards less mainstream works?
B: The closest thing to underground features at Cannes are those shown at Critics’ Week. Here, first or second time directors with a distinct voice are given the chance to have their work screened, and most of this work is a riskier than the rest of Cannes. The most interesting discoveries (and the most terrible films!) can be seen at Critics’ Week.
S: Any tips for underground filmmakers wanting to enter Cannes next year?
B: For Cinefondation, filmmakers of course need to be connected to a film school, otherwise either go for the Official Selection and there is also the Short Film Corner. Those selected for Cinefondation this year however appeared very well funded and all were shot on 35mm apart from one from Bosnia-Herzegovina, shot on video. Overall, the festival was very heartening - once you get away from the sleazy commercial film market, the quality of films is very impressive and there seems to be a sense of real integrity.
2007 SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL - QUICK RUNDOWN
The Sydney Film Festival has a new artistic director this year who seems vaguely keen on slightly more boundary-pushing, slightly less accessible cinema (albeit most of the films shown at the festival had already done the rounds of virtually every other major film festival on earth before coming to Sydney, so let’s not get too excited).... so I decided to splash out on a ten-film flexi pass and make the most of it. Here is a quick run-down of my top 7 (in no particular order):
- Brand Upon The Brain! (Guy Maddin, Canada/ USA)
Gorgeously shot, absurdist, silent cinema-esque nostalgia piece. Highly imaginative characters and narrated by the always enigmatic Isabella Rosellini (“I love goats!” exclaimed randomly was a highlight....). Captivating, however I think would have been more powerful as a long short - the intensity wavered.
- Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten (Julien Temple, Ireland/ UK)
Such an uncreative, cliched opening did not portend good things. This, coupled with the unsuitable venue (stick to showing bands Metro Theatre! We would rather not spend $17 to watch a DVD) got me off to a bad start with this one, however by the end of this colourful, seemingly very informed tale, I found myself getting all emotional. A good film to watch as a group (around the fire, perhaps...), particularly to have a good laugh at Bono and Johnny Depp. Well worth it for the fans. Ah...if only I was alive in the 70’s!
- Hallam Foe: (David Mackenzie, UK)
Nothing ground-breaking or particularly experimental about this one, but completely charming and darkly hilarious all the same. A coming-of-age film about a disturbingly voyeuristic young Scottish guy who has a few theories on his mother’s death and isn’t afraid to behave exactly how he feels. Beautifully acted and directed - a far cry from the director’s last film (Young Adam).
- Build A Ship, Sail To Sadness (Laurin Federlein, UK)
I was very surprised that this one was screened at SFF - it should have been screened with us at SUFF, dammit! It’s a film school experiment shot on Hi8 which vaguely takes the style of a low budget doco and follows the trials and tribulations of a German petrol sniffer intent on starting a Mobile Disco to ‘heal the loneliness’ in remote towns of Scotland. It is also a musical and is completely hilarious, although some of the audience did not find it as funny as I did in fact I think I made a bit of a fool of myself laughing so hard.
- Wolfsbergen, (Nanouk Leopold, The Netherlands)
There are few opening shots to rival the opening shot of Wolfsbergen - bold, heart-wrenching and suggestive. Moments of this film held traces of this intensity and beauty, although others seemed empty. This director has managed to make each one of her shots as controlled as a work of art in itself (although this assumes all works of art are controlled...so maybe I should re-think that analogy...) and the performances, particularly the performances of the youngest characters seem brutally honest. The highlight was actually hearing Nanouk speak on stage after the film - very relieving to see that she doesn’t take herself as seriously as her films might suggest!
- Me (Yo) (Rafa Cortes, Spain)
Again, the highlight was hearing the director respond after the screening - although I do believe that the work should speak for itself. The director explained to his audience a little about the process of making the film, which involved extensive workshopping and even scripting with the main actor. This less controlled, performance based based approach wasn’t completely made apparent by watching the film but enhanced my appreciation of it once I was aware. I also found it very heartening that the entire film was shot on DVCam, yet looked amazing (and I don’t think they had much of a budget for grading, either) although Majorca would probably look amazing through any lens.
- Inland Empire (David Lynch, US)
Well, I could fill volumes with my thoughts on this film. I haven’t been as excited to see a film probably since Mulholland Drive, so suffice to say, there were some pretty high expectations on my part. One thing I do want to highlight is the audience reaction. The theatre appeared to be filled with mostly young, probably open minded and probably fairly die-hard Lynch fans. And yet even this audience was divided and were not holding back in expressing themselves throughout the film. Around 50 people walked out at various stages, someone shouted in outrage ‘This is not a comedy!’ while people laughed at clearly comedic parts, people screamed inadvertently in some visually arresting moments (won’t give away what they were in case you haven’t seen it!) and a handful were actually hysterical - I could hear people switching from uncontrolled tears to laughter to gurgles of horror within the space of five minutes. As a filmmaker, I realised that this is one of my personal goals: to catch the audience off guard and to produce an emotional and intellectual reaction so strong that it is unable to be subdued. David Lynch, you are my hero. (More on Inland Empire and David Lynch next issue).
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SIOUXZI'S PICK OF THE MONTH - CINEMA OF TRANSGRESSION
For this pick of the month, Siouxzi has decided to focus not on one particular film but on Cinema of Transgression - hopefully an inspiration!
“If it’s not transgressive, it’s not underground. It has to be threatening the status quo by doing something surprising, not just imitating what’s been done before.” - Nick Zedd
The post-punk, No Wave music scene proved to be extremely influential on filmmakers living in the Lower East Side of New York City in the eighties: the result was an explosion of the film scene. Confronting established values and breaking taboos was the main driving force and new politics and aesthetics in cinema broke loose and inspired independent filmmakers worldwide.
Even a decade later, filmmakers like Gus Van Sant were showing signs of the influence of Cinema of Transgression (for example his debut feature 'Mala Noce' which in turn influenced the New Queer Cinema), and even music video was touched by the movement (such as Richard Kern's videos for Sonic Youth).
For those of you who haven't read it, Nick Zed's 1984 Manifesto is powerful, direct and refreshing: a call to action for all underground filmmakers. An extract:
"We violate the command and law that we bore audiences to death in rituals of circumlocution and propose to break all the taboos of our age by sinning as much as possible. There will be blood, shame, pain and ecstasy, the likes of which no one has yet imagined. None shall emerge unscathed. Since there is no afterlife, the only hell is the hell of praying, obeying laws, and debasing yourself before authority figures, the only heaven is the heaven of sin, being rebellious, having fun, fucking, learning new things and breaking as many rules as you can. This act of courage is known as transgression. We propose transformation through transgression - to convert, transfigure and transmute into a higher plane of existence in order to approach freedom in a world full of unknowing slaves."
See http://www.ubu.com/film/transgression.html for the full Manifesto and for some highlighted Transgressive films.
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AND FINALLY...
Please keep checking out the website as more prizes, guests, jury, films, sponsors, sound bytes, photos, and bits of random info are added!
www.sydneyundergroundfilmfestival.com
Plus send us an email for an invite to the SUFF Launch: info@suff.com.au
Thanks for reading!
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