The first announcement of films playing Boston Underground Film Festival 2016 are here, and it's a boatload of freaky fun and special guests. From March 23rd through March 27th, the 18th BUFF will proudly put on the weirdest films of the year in New England. The parties, carousing, guests, and films all make BUFF a destination for ravenous gourmands of the bizarre. Are you ready to learn more?! Throw your devil horns in the air and check out this brutal wave!
Larry Fessenden (Tales From Beyond The Pale, I Sell The Dead) will hit the fest's main home, the venerable arthouse Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA, for a special 15-year anniversary screening of his film Wendigo on 35mm. BUFF favorite Frank Henenlotter (Bad Biology, Basket Case) returns with his latest, Chasing Banksy, a caper comedy about art theft, and Henenlotter and cowriter/star Anthony Sneedwill be in attendance. Richard Bates, Jr. and Anna Lynne McCord will accompany Trash Fire, the festival's closing night film, fresh from Sundance!
Additional screenings will also take place at the nearby at the Harvard Film Archive, including a live performance of Standby for Tape Back Up, a Fantastic Fest 2015 and 2014 Edinburgh Fringe Fest standout. Ross Sutherland is taking a break from his current UK tour to bring his not-to-be-missed show to the Commonwealth. Recalling the way Dark Side of the Moon synchronizes with The Wizard of Oz, Sutherland creates his own personal audio visual meditation using fragments of old movies and television programs from a VHS tape that somehow became the story of his life.
Also at the HFA is Sympathy for the Devil: The Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgement, a documentary that explores a religious group that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, founded by the English couple Mary Ann and Robert DeGrimston, with filmmaker Neil Edwards in attendance.
This is just the first wave; there's lots more weird animation, music videos, shorts, and features to be announced! Looking for the best in weird cinema?
Get your passes and tickets now!
More from the press release:
The 18th annual Boston Underground Film Festival returns, bringing with it an onslaught of phantasmagoria and intrigue to the Brattle Theatre and Harvard Film Archive from March 23rd through the 27th. This year’s schedule boasts an eclectic selection of weird, wonderful programming packed with guests both familiar and new, parties, and more!
Bookending this year’s festival of madness are Sundance juggernauts The Lure and Trash Fire. Kicking off the festivities on March 23rd at the Brattle Theatre is the genre-smashing, absolutely infectious Polish vampire-mermaid, '80s-themed horror/disco/musical The Lure, directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska: Mermaid attire highly encouraged!
Additional beloved festival alumni are set to triumphantly return, including Zach Clark, director of 2009’s Modern Love is Automatic and 2013’s White Reindeer (both Best Feature award winners), who will be in attendance to present his pathos-drenched, feel-good flick for your inner goth girl, Little Sister, which world premieres at SXSW later this month. Robert G. Putka (2012 Best Short winner for Mouthful) brings his fresh from Slamdance debut feature MAD, a nod to Cold War nuclear lingo (“Mutually Assured Destruction”) as a combative, emotionally compromised woman careens off the rails, leaving a pair of bickering adult daughters to cope with her and one another.
In celebration of homegrown talent, BUFF is pleased to present the World Premiere of Blood of the Tribades, a Jean Rollin-inspired, dreamy 70s lesbian vampire tale, from hometown heroes and local rock’n’rollers Michael J. Epstein and Sophia Cacciola.
We’ll have our kid-friendly annual Saturday Morning Cartoons with cereal smorgasbord, programmed by renowned curator and author KierLa Janisse, a bounty of shorts programming celebrating fantastic music videos, animation, transgressive horror, and more! So. Much. More!
Individual screening ticket prices vary and will be available online and at the Brattle Theatre box office on the day of screening. Festival passes, which include admission to all films and parties, are available at a significantly reduced rate through BUFF’s ongoing presales Kickstarter, which ends on March 18th. Passes, thereafter, will be available for $175 at www.bostonunderground.org/tickets.
Full schedule coming soon to www.bostonunderground.org!