PREVIEW: 2021 SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL

Sydney’s leading festival for cult and underground cinematic misadventures, the Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF), returns with a packed virtual program in 2021, celebrating its milestone 15th year.

With lockdown restrictions in Sydney affecting in-the-flesh desires for SUFF 2021, festival organisers made the call to stream its full program on-demand to fans of alternative culture across Australia and the world from Thursday 9th September to Sunday 26th September.

The 2021 line-up features 30 feature films and documentaries, 20 Australian premieres, a special 40-year anniversary film, and over 100 shorts representing filmmakers from Australia, the USA, the UK, France, Norway, Canada, Finland, Denmark, India, Japan, and the Russian Federation.

Katherine Berger, Festival Director said, “At a time when there is so much uncertainty, we couldn’t bear to postpone or cancel SUFF in 2021. We owe it to so many people that support SUFF and that includes all the filmmakers that have been submitting films to us all throughout the pandemic. It’s been a tough time to host an event and a tough time to be making films, but creative outlets are so important, especially in a time like this.”

Opening Night honours fall to SWEETIE, YOU WON’T BELIEVE IT (pictured, above), from Kazakhstan-based director Yernar Nurgaliyev, a no-holds-barred road trip film about a man who decides to get away from his nagging wife with his friends, befallen by a series of highly entertaining and incomprehensible events.

One of the most anticipated films will be the Australian premiere of THE LAND, a cinematic experiment between photographer Ingvar Kenne, academic Gregory Ferris, and award-winning actors Steve Rodgers and Cameron Stewart. A microbudget, improvised drama, The Land is a bold and confronting story of friendship tested by a very dark secret, filmed over the course of three years.

Sessions reminding us of the importance of community include ALIEN ON STAGE, where an amateur dramatics group create a serious stage adaptation of the sci-fi horror classic and the philosophical documentary CANNON ARM AND THE ARCADE QUEST (pictured, right), in which ‘Cannon Arm’ Kim attempt to be the first in the world to play an arcade machine from the early ‘80s for 100 consecutive hours. 

Documentaries with women at the forefront include FANNY: THE RIGHT TO ROCK, revealing the untold story of a Filipina American garage band that morphed into the ferocious rock group Fanny; POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHÉ, in which the death of X-Ray Spex front-woman Poly Styrene (pictured, top) sends her daughter on an intimate journey through her mother's archives; and, indie director Beth B’s LYDIA LUNCH: THE WAR IS NEVER OVER, the first career-spanning retrospective of New York City’s preeminent No Wave icon of the late 70s.

Australia’s underground sector is repped by Robert Wood’s bloody black-comedy AN IDEAL HOST, where the apocalypse comes to dinner and SWEETHURT, Sydney filmmaker Tom Danger’s intertwining stories of love, friendship, and paralysing regret.

One of the most challenging SUFF titles will undoubtedly be HOTEL POSEIDON, a film reminiscent of Delicatessen, that follows reluctant hotel owner Dave, a man troubled by nightmares, his neighbour and love. And a special 40th anniversary presentation of Polish director Walerian Borowczyk’s THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE, a visually stunning, perverse adaptation of the classic story, starring Udo Kier (pictured, below), is a major coup for the festival.

This year, SUFF introduces three new shorts selections: a special slate of science fiction shorts in OTHER WORLDS, presented in conjunction with The Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival; a quartet of films about friendship, duty and revenge in LOVABLE IDIOTS; and EXPLODING EYEBALLS, exploring all forms of animation from the experimental to the traditional. A special sidebar is called SHAKE HANDS WITH DANGER, a slate of hilarious vintage educational films with live commentary by beloved underground identities, Jay Katz and Miss Death.

This year’s smorgasbord of shorts includes our usual favourite sessions - non-fiction shorts in REALITY BITES; the most disturbing and beautiful love stories in LOVE/SICK; SHIT SCARED, the best cinematic darkness; mind-expanding narratives of LSD FACTORY; the best emergent Australian talent in OZPLOIT!; and WTF!, the films too strange and excessive to go anywhere else in the program.

15th ANNUAL SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL will launch online Thursday 9th September and run Sunday 26th September at www.suff.com.au