As a film festival enthusiast, and a fan of independent genre cinema, you are no doubt by now familiar with the 2020 film festival circuit moving to an online format due to gather restrictions and health and safety measures all over the world. An interesting advantage of so many festivals moving online is that it opens up the casual or travel-budget strapped festival goer with the chance to catch both titles and a festival tone from the various regional festivals that they would otherwise not get the chance to see.
The 17th edition of the Calgary Underground Film Festival is all set and rearing to go from June 22 - 28, with a mixture of streaming features, online events, and if you are indeed local and need to get out of the house, some Drive-In experiences.
Events and films include such diverse subjects as VHS collecting, living in a van down by the river, taxidermy, Wakaliwood, Thunder Bay punk rock, as well as the traditional found-footage celebration and cereal cartoon party.
Browse through the gallery to see a sample of the features and events at this years ONLINE version of the festival.
Big Fur
This Alberta documentary follows champion taxidermist Ken Walker, whose latest project is to recreate a full size, full texture version of "Patty" the famous Big Foot, and enter it in the World Taxidermy Championship. If you can't find Big Foot, make her.
Yummy
Belgian filmmaker Lars Damoiseaux has made one of the craziest, funniest, most inventive, and hyped-up zombie gorefests since Peter Jackson's Brain Dead.
A young couple travel to a shabby Eastern European hospital for plastic surgery where an outbreak of a virus that will change doctors, patients and family into bloodthirsty zombies.
Sleeze Lake
Fans of Jessica Bruder's mobile-living opus, Nomadland (currently being adapted into a feature film directed by Chloé Zhao) should take notice of this documentary on a Van-City. No, not Vancouver, an actual city of vans, that was erected in the 1970s. Van-living nomads and hippies eventually grew the place to 20,000 people and had one hell of a party.
Synchronic At The Drive-In
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead dip their toes into the mainstream with a drug fuelled time travelling drama that stars Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan. Rest assured their intimate themes and darkly comic sensibilites remain intact for the ride.
Synchonic as well as two other features, Random Acts of Violence, and the provocatively named Uncle Peckerhead will all screen at the Big Rock Brewery Drive-In.
In Conversation with Darren Bousman
Former TIFF Midnight Madness programmer and producer Colin Geddes will host an intimate and candid chat with director Darren Bousman. Looking at the incredibly successful SAW films, they will discuss the evolution of a franchise, the indie horror landscape and the future of genre cinema.
Crazy World
The latest 'extreme DIY' feature from the enthusiastic filmmaking collective in Uganda, aka Wakaliwood, involves all of the things their fans have come to love, the 'special' effects, kidnapping plots involving the local mafia, guns, explosions and the ever present video-joker, a kind of live-commentary to further spice up the mayhem.
Dead Dicks
From Montreal filmmakers Lee Paula Springer and Chris Bavota, comes this goopy, surreal body-double horror which took home the audience award for best Canadian feature at last years' Fantasia Film Festival.
After Becca receives a distressing call from her suicidal brother Richie, she rushes over to his apartment and finds him alive and well - surrounded by copies of his own dead body.
Homewrecker
Screen Anarchy's own Zach Gayne's film has been described as a pressure cooker, a full middle-class satire, and my personal favourite, the "best bonkers thriller Lifetime wishes they made."
When two women meet at their Yoga class and become fast friends, things go downhill once they begin to redecorates one of their homes, and the other refuses to let her leave.
The ever popular All-You-Can-Eat Cereal Cartoon party will have to be done the old fashioned way this year, at home in front of your own screen with your own cereal. And there is nothing wrong with that. The 3 hour omnibus programme will still be curated by Kier-La Janisse, and feature classic cartoons from the 60s, 70s, 80s (and occasionally a hairs bredth into 90s) along with network bumpers, PSA, and wackadoodle commercials embedded in between the episodes.