Lausanne Underground 2023: APOCALYPSE CLOWN, DIVINTY And HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS Feature in Swiss Avant-Garde Fest

LUFF 2023: A Trip Through a Strange Dimension Full of Exquisite Dissonances

 

A must-attend event for all followers of avant-garde and innovative sonic and cinematographic discoveries, the Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival comes back in full power this Fall and unveils the programme of its 22nd edition. From the Casino de Montbenon to Cinéma Bellevaux, and through EJMA or the Galerie HumuS, the festival sets anchor in various cultural venues in the city of Lausanne, Switzerland. For five days and four nights, it takes its audience beyond the frontiers, on an exploratory expedition at the heart of underground artistic projects. Spotlight on the programme at LUFF 2023, taking place from October 18 to 22. 

 

A Japanese dog with its harmonium, a profusion of Bruce Lee’s clones, a Russian clown and clowns in mourning, the Film, Music, and OFF programmes combine the most unexpected, eclectic, and definitely experimental artistic projects, and promise a 22nd edition that is as brutally exciting as it is wonderfully striking. A total of 93 movies will be screened, 40 of them as part of the international competition. 22 sound performances will take place in the Salle des Fêtes of Casino de Montbenon. On its Esplanade, 8 transdisciplinary projects will be presented in the free part of the festival. This year’s programme is rounded off by 5 workshops, 1 sound installation, 1 exhibition and 1 book launch.

 

In the presence of its director Jérôme Vanderwattyne and the actress Séverine Cayron, The Belgian Wave will open this edition with a paranormal investigation of a journalist’s mysterious disappearance, related to the Belgian UFO Wave in the 1990s. The festival will be closing with Apocalypse Clown, a funereal and clownish comedy by the Irishman Georges Kane. In between, screenings of all sorts will follow one another, from Wednesday to Sunday at the Casino’s cinema halls as well as at Cinéma Bellevaux and EJMA. 

 

Consisting of 5 fiction feature films and 4 short film programmes (fiction, experimental, animation, documentaries), the international competition will take place in full swing until Saturday evening. Sci-fi, anarchic cartoons and satire will rub shoulders within the feature films competition, entirely comprised of Swiss Premieres. In Divinity, produced by Steven Soderbergh, a retro-futuristic and sensual fresco is constructed with the sumptuous 16 mm photography and a very sharp black and white. Whereas, Hundreds of Beavers pays tribute to silent cinema, borrowing the codes of cartoon and video game. Hello Dankness bears witness to the psychotropic spectacle of American politics from 2016 to 2021. Also rooted in our times, Poundcake takes a provocative look at the complexity of current social issues. Stopmotion explores the creative process of the animation technique within a horror scenario. As for the 35 selected shorts, they invite to look at hypnotic and surrealist worlds, to decrypt twisted narratives, to question identity and self-acceptance or to travel in foreign territories, inhabited by strange creatures. 

 

Every year, LUFF prepares thematic film programmes, tailor-made for its audience. As part of one of these 6 cineramas, the festival will welcome Peggy Ahwesh and show her work as part of a crossed retrospective with Doris Wishman that presents the intertwined views of these two major filmmakers thematising female desire on screen. Opération Bruceploitation, with the documentary Enter the Clones of Bruce as a central piece, will dissect the strange cinematographic worshipping of the Hong Kongese actor following his death in the 70s. The exclusive full retrospective of Ericka Beckman’s performative pictures will be honouring the American director’s career; while another cinerama dedicated to the Hungarian director Attila Janisch will put his surrealist films in the spotlight. Frivolités helléniques will take an interest in the development of erotic movies in a Greece under dictatorship, up to their exploitation beyond the country’s borders. Finally, Archivi vandali will unveil the fresco in motion made of forgotten archives and shreds of nitrate films by Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi.

 

Five feature documentaries will complete the Film programme. Produced as a collection of documents filmed in 8 and 16 mm by founding members of Coil, A Way to Die: The Films of Peter Christopherson and John Balance will make its International Premiere in the presence of Maxime Lachaud and Reivaks Timeless. A must-watch for Nick Cave’s admirers, Mutiny in Heaven: The Birthday Party (Swiss Premiere) retraces the origins of the legendary singer’s first band. Following a fleeting phenomenon from London called Rema-Rema, What You Could Not Visualise (Swiss Premiere) also tells the story of an obscure and mythical musical group. Stand By for Failure: A Documentary About Negativland (Swiss Premiere) takes on the challenge of spending 99 minutes pouring over one of the most indefinable entities of sound experimentation there is. Home Invasion (Swiss Premiere) moves away from the music theme to tell the nightmarish history of the doorbell.