I ask Bryan what he looks for when choosing films.
In our early days we were very influenced by Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, George Kuchar, Craig Baldwin, John Waters. Films that were deliberately shocking or provocative. Over the years I became much more interested in formal experimentation. ‘Underground’ means a lot of different things to different people and I try to explore all those different interpretations.
While CUFF’s films push boundaries in either subject or format, the fest’s vibe is decidedly mid-Western: laid-back, intimate and unpolished. This is a beer and T-shirt kind of film fest.
Given that the boundaries between filmmaker and audience, creator and critic are almost nonexistent here, I ask Bryan what he thinks a filmmaker is anyway.
I've attended film screenings where no actual film ran through the projector…where a super8 projector was turned on a screen and various objects (a crystal ashtray, a glass of whiskey etc) manipulated by the "filmmaker" to create patterns of light.
To me, Bryan says, that is as much a "film" by a "filmmaker" as a narrative feature or a documentary.
A filmmaker, he says, is anyone who uses film or more often video to create or express something.
Below are a few standouts from the festival – you can view a full list here. If you want to submit your film for 2018, check CUFF.org in August for details.
All used with permission of CUFF.org, unless otherwise noted.
CUFF JURY AWARD:
THE PINK EGG, dir. Jim Trainor
71 min., 2016, USA
“You can find all of Shakespeare and De Sade in the lives of insects”
Luis Buñuel
