“Is this Theatre 9?” asked a moviegoer as he entered one of the large stadium seating houses of the General Cinema Fenway. Soon this theater, number 9, would be showing the opening night 35mm shorts program of the 3rd Annual Boston Underground Film Festival (B.U.F.F.).
“Yes,” shouted a man, already seated in the audience, “Theater 9, ‘Finding Forrester.’” The crowd laughed as the moviegoer took his seat. Under normal circumstances, the GCC Fenway isn’t exactly thought of as a showcase for edgy avant-garde cinema. Yet, here it is, 20 minutes before the start of B.U.F.F,. and Theater 9 is filling to kickoff eight days of films ranging from experimental and underground to obscene and absurd.
“It’s really great to have films that are so underground in such an above ground venue,” joked festival curator Jeff Silva during his introduction. The Revolving Museum and the Jorge Hernandez Culture Center showcased films as well. The opening night program featured eight shorts, half of which were animated. Many of these films are not the kind you expect to see playing at a theater. Some feature mature content and subject matter too bizarre for mainstream culture. One thing is for certain – everything in this festival presents a unique cinematic vision.
The first short was a mood-setter and a good preview of what was to come. Bill Plympton’s “Can’t Drag Race With Jesus “ is a short two-minute animated bit with Jesus depicted as a drag-racing rock star.
Don Hertzfeldt’s short “Rejected,” really kicked things into high gear. It sets itself up as a showcase for series of bumpers that were commissioned by the Family Learning Channel and rejected upon review. What follows is about 10 minutes of severely deranged stick figure animation that goes from strange to stranger. This film was easily the night’s funniest and holds the honor of being the first Oscar-nominated film ever to feature the line, “My anus is bleeding.”
The best film of the program came next, a live action, black and white drama entitled “Dog Days.” At the core, director Ellie Lee’s film is a touching story about a girl (Sonya Genel) and her dog set in a post-nuclear future. The twist is that the dog is actually a man in a dog suit, who one day shows up in search of food. The film is a strong and beautifully shot character study examining the way various family members adjust to having the “dog” around. What transpires is a truly touching and powerful tale that’s almost a post-apocalyptic “Old Yeller.”
“When I tried to get the film rights to [author Judy Budnitz’s] short story I got a lot of feedback from other filmmakers. One woman said, ‘I think you’re crazy for trying to make your first fiction film from this particular story, but I happen to know a guy who can play a dog,’” director Ellie Lee said following the screening. “I went out to L.A. and worked with Spencer [the actor] for about a month. He had previously spent four months playing a dog. That dog, very much like in this film, represented a more loyal and innocent side of human nature. The funny thing is about two weeks after he wrapped shooting on ‘Dog Days,’ he got cast as a guest-star on ‘Sabrina The Teenage Witch’ to play a dog again.”
Showing in the place of a film that’s print wasn’t ready in time was Jonathan Bekemeier’s “Titler,” a live action short featuring a cross-dressing Hitler singing obscene parodies of Broadway musical tunes. To call this film original and hilarious doesn’t quite do it justice; it was too deranged for words.
Jeremy Solterbeck’s “Moving Illustrations of Machines” was a beautifully hand-animated short comparable to anything in “Fantasia 2000.” Its strangely haunting commentary on technology and man is mesmerizing.
The final film of the night was Guy Madden’s “Heart of the World.” In the program’s liner notes, Madden refers to this film as “The world’s first subliminal melodrama!” In five minutes, Madden has loaded this film to the edges. Shot in black and white, “Heart” has the look of a 1920s German expressionist film with special effects that wouldn’t look out of place in a Méliés film, and editing suitable for MTV. The short is the story of two brothers — a youth mortician and an actor who plays Jesus, who both love the same woman. Then the earth has a heart attack. This painfully constructed masterpiece of experimental cinema was the perfect finale for the evening.
As the lights went up and the crowd began to clear out, it was difficult not be satisfied with the evening. While all too many experimental and underground films make the mistake of forgetting to be good, the shorts making B.U.F.F.’s opening night were consistently new and interesting. And as crowds exited the theater, the sign hanging over the door of Theater 9 read “Finding Forrester.”
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