Sydney Underground Film Festival
Time Out recommends the best films from 2008's Sydney Underground Film Festival
By Brooke Salisbury
You'll laugh, cry and cringe when the Sydney Underground Film Festival hits the Factory Theatre this week; its program ripe with features, shorts, documentaries, dramas and sneak peaks. The four-day festival is a cheeky and charming mix of local produce set to make us Sydneysiders proud. Here are the highlights according to Time Out...
George Gittoes' eagerly anticipated new film The Miscreants is a mind-blowing mix of documentary and drama. The film contrasts darkness and light and does some serious film rule bending, asking what's real, what's unreal and what's too real in a war-torn 2008?
Mock Up On Mu uncovers the underground chronology of the magickal confluence of aerospace, sci-fi, the occult, and bohemianism in post-War California with a collage of ‘found' film snippets cobbled together by creator Craig Baldwin.
Astro Black: History of Hip Hop is a narrative remix video constructed entirely from pirated film and music samples. It's based on the concepts of Afrofuturism - a field of cultural theory that views the use of science fiction tropes in black sonic culture as a radical form of social politics.
The Love/Sick collection teases that ‘kinky' is to use a feather and ‘perverted' is to use the whole chicken. The arresting program of sexy and sordid films address the accessability of pornography to the psychology of sexual jealousy, and plain old intimacy.
Quality Time is a visually arresting film with a tremendous cast of local actors. The black comedy walks the tightrope between narrative and avant-garde/ in your face/ mind-altering teaspoon of insanity.
Finally, Song Sung Blue is the stranger-than-fiction tragicomic love story of Lightning & Thunder, a husband and wife singing duo that pay tribute to the music of Neil Diamond.
Sydney Underground Film Festival runs from 11 Sep-14 Sep at the Factory Theatre, 105 Victoria Rd, Enmore 2042. (02 9550 3666) Adult $12, concs $10; 4-day pass $70 adult; $65 concs.