Multiple Maniacs: 10 Years Of Sydney Underground Film Festival

By Mikey Carr

Celebrating it’s tenth birthday this year, Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF) has always championed the weird and wonderful in cinema. With this year’s event featuring events like a Saturday morning all you can eat cereal and cartoon party and the festival closing screening of John Waters cult classic Multiple Maniacs – to call SUFF “unconventional” barely seems to do it justice.

The carefully curated program spans everything from established indie fare, such as Todd Solondz new film Weiner-Dog, to Mexican director Emiliano Rocher Minter’s psycho-sexual apocalyptic debut We Are The Flesh. Featuring a rich variety of styles and genres, SUFF is the kind of festival where a film like George Gittoes’ documentary on his work with Afgan street gangs Snow Monkey will screen beside ANTIBIRTH, video artist Danny Perez’s psychedelic tale of immaculate alien impregnation starring Natasha Lyonne and Chloë Sevigny.

By refusing to be limited by what established taste deems art, Popescu and co have proven that modern audiences are crying out for the kind of weird and confronting films the more “serious” local festivals might turn their noses up to. Even though many of these films have come off great screening at international festivals like Sundance or Venice Film Festival. And it is working, because at a time when a lot of other film festivals are seeing declining attendance, SUFF’s audience is still growing, and all without federal funding.

“For us, it’s always been a case of if the audience doesn’t come the festival doesn’t happen. It is a very grass roots event” says co-director of the festival Stefan Popescu.

This grass roots approach is informed very directly by the festivals lack of federal funding. As despite being around for ten years and demonstrating they have an engaged and regular audience Screen Australia has nevertheless fails to invite SUFF to apply for triennial funding year after year.

“We don’t have any major funding or the prestige of say Cannes or Sundance either, so we really have to focus on finding and building our audience. That’s the great thing about the alternative communities in Sydney, they are all really supportive and curious to see something new.”

And find and build an audience they have, doing so simply  by supporting the work of cinematic weirdos like Perez, Gittoes and Minter. For what SUFF and Popescu know better than most, is that it’s the weirdos of the world that are it’s greatest cultural resource, a lesson Sydney’s legislators would do well to learn.

“I’m just waiting for the government here to wake up and realize they should be throwing money at the weirdos,” Stefan explains, adding that “it’s the weirdos that have made places like New York and Paris the cultural centres they are.”

Unfortunately it doesn’t look to happen anytime soon, with Casino Mike Baird and his Lockout Laws serving as a chilling reprise to the city’s long history of neglecting it’s fringe sub cultures and alternative communities. Still, where the state fails, it’s up to us the citizens to lead the way. We’re just lucky we’ve got people like Popescu and co leading the charge for outsider cinema, and always seeking to showcase it to the widest audience possible.

“We support alternative voices and communities, but we’ve also always wanted to keep the festival an entirely open space for all people,” he says.

“After all, what is the point of celebrating alternative culture if there is no one there to be educated about it?” Stefan asks.

Don’t go in expecting your run of the mill film festival fare though. With the cinematic offerings at SUFF often touching on uncomfortable and disturbing material, Popescu has to come to expect at a least a few walkouts every year. In fact he celebrates them.

“We get walkouts every year, and when it happens I’m always surprised. To still get walkouts in this day and age just seems crazy. At the same time though, I do take a little joy in it, to still be freaking people out after ten years means we must be doing something right, right?

“We actually had some people pass out a few years ago during a film called Wetlands. It was a very sexually charged movie, and during the very intense climax of the film someone passed out. Then someone went to help them and passed out as well. I thought it might have been the apocalypse there for a moment as it seemed to be spreading” he tells me.

This doesn’t mean however that the festival organizers don’t have their limits. Never ones to shy away from difficult subject matter or graphic sex and/or violence, at the same time they try to sort out the artistic expression from the purile and exploitative.

“Unless it’s illegal, we’ll screen it if we believe in it. Even if it is illegal really, if we felt like it was worth going to jail for screening something we’d do it, but luckily that hasn’t happened yet,” Stefan explains.

“When something is just gratuitous though that’s something else entirely. For instance we refused to screen A Serbian Film, because after we watched it it just kind of felt like it was indulging in sexual violence for the sake of spectacle.”

This distinction is important for Popescu, who hopes to “through curation paint a positive picture of the alternative, even if that is sometime challenging or confronting.”

Somewhat evangelical when it comes to promoting the festival and its films, he rightfully sees SUFF as an important and rare platform for the kind of unconventional Australian and International films often overlooked by local distributors.

“Cinemas are almost reserved for big Hollywood blockbusters these days, with smaller stranger films like ours really relying on festivals like ours to find an audience. A lot of our films won’t ever make it to cinemas. Even Weiner-Dog, Todd Solondz’ new film that we’re premiering might not even make it to cinemas out here, you just don’t know,” Stefan says.

This is perhaps the most compelling reason to check out the festival. Whereas a lot of the major festivals these days seem to be little more than advanced screening sessions, SUFF can honestly boast that most of the films on their program won’t be released in cinemas in Australia, making the festival the only place you can see them.

SUFF is then is not only one of the few platforms in Sydney for outsider film makers, it’s perhaps the only major event on the city’s film calendar that actively promotes them. And as the government seems to be doing everything it can to give the arts as little funds as possible, festivals like SUFF are more important than ever to help nurture the city’s alternative communities. For as Popescu himself knows all too well, it’s the weirdos among us that make the world great.

Sydney Underground Film Festival runs from this Thursday 15th – Sunday 18th September at The Factory Theatre with tickets on sale now from the festival website.