The 9th Annual Sydney Underground Film Festival will kick off at the Factory Theatre in Marrickville on September 17th, and will feature an awesome line up of over 100 features, documentaries and short films. The line up features a list if the world’s most daring, subversive and experimental films, and to chat through it all, we caught up with Festival director and co-founder Stefan Popescu who talks about how he got involved in the event, picks his favourites of the festival and more.
How did you first become involved as the Director and curator of the festival?
Kath and I founded the festival in 2007, because we felt that our tastes and cinematic interests were not being represented in other local festivals, and naively decided to start the most outrageous, kickass film festival in the universe…or at least in Sydney’s inner west. We both had tertiary educations in the field of cinema and practical filmmaking, but never in event management or curatorial – we just had to learn all that on the job.
How would you say SUFF has evolved over the past few years both in terms of popularity and content?
When we began the festival, we had some conservative reactions to the content and concept of the whole festival, but over the past nine years the Sydney audiences have seemed embraced their dark and adventurous side.
We used to attract a smaller, more niche cinephile demographic, but now we see a wider demographic that just wanting an exciting new experience in theatre, so in a way it’s kind of like going to a carnival. The general attitude seems to be ‘what the heck, let go watch some weirdo cinema’.
In terms of content, we screen a larger program than in the early days of the festival and far riskier stuff now as well. Of course we would never break the law, but we enjoy finding content that is controversial, socially taboo or bordering on being illegal. I think we have developed a more discerning palette for the twisted and depraved cinema.
Is there any particular vetting process involved in curating the list of features for SUFF each year?
Every festival has their own varied programming strategy and that what defines the curatorial process. Ours is pretty open and fluid – we try not to have many preconceptions before the programming begins, and then we gorge on films from a number of different sources and allow for the program to form itself through us. I know that sounds wanky and zen, but it’s true. We program what we like, and I think most festivals do the same – that’s how a festival develops it’s own unique personality. We love finding unknown indie gems, but we also look around for provocative, daring, experimental, bold, political stuff that might piss a few people off.
The list of shorts is also impressive, is there any different curatorial process for these as compared to features?
Same process really, but we get a bit more wiggle room with shorts. You can get away with a lot more with a short film than a feature in terms of experimentation.
Short film session themes might also change year to year depending on what filmmakers are producing. For example, a really popular session in the past few years has been “So bad it’s good”, where we would screen films films that were so terrible, they were highly entertaining. But unfortunately, we didn’t get many of those this year. However, this year we received plenty of films that left us thinking “WTF did I just watch”?, so we have a “WTF Shorts” session instead.
What can we expect from the line up of masterclasses?
All the cool stuff involved in indie filmmaking – drones , blood, gore, pyrotechnics, alternative distribution, etc.
With often extreme content in films at SUFF, has there ever been any crowd reactions which you didn’t expect or which have been particularly notable?
Yes, last year during the closing night film “Wetlands”, at the emotional climax of the film three people passed out one after another. We were all stunned. We weren’t sure if it was a joke of some sort or we angered the gods enough to bring about the apocalypse early.
What would be your top picks of the festival?
Apart from Gaspar Noe’s Love and Eli Roth’s Knock Knock, I would recommend:
Reality (Quentin Dupieaux) – kinda like being john Malkovich meets inception.
Bunny The Killer Thing (Joonas Makkonen) – because a mutated rapist bunny has never never been funnier.
Kung Fu Elliot (Matthew Bauckman) – A documentary about Elliot ‘White Lightning’ Scott, who claims to be Canada’s Chuck Norris, but is really more like Canada’s Tommy wiseau.
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The 9th annual Sydney Underground Film Festival lands from the 17th to the 20th of September at the Factory Theatre in Marrickille. For tickets, full schedule and more details head to: suff.com.au
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