CONTROVERSIAL FILMMAKER'S NEW MOVIE TRAILER

''This film has no rules, it's an orgy of sight & sound stitched together to create mania.''
Movie-maker Fabrizio Federico's vision for his next film Teddy Bears Live Forever is miles away from being finished but finding it's voice organically is something that excites the underground filmmaker who is currently working on the editing phase of the film, ''I let the stars lead the way.''

A faded ''It girl'' suffering from a horrific schizophrenia disorder decides that it's time for one of her personalities to lose her virginity. Whether her abuse problems first started in her teen's; from either her hyperfast life of trauma in her celebrity modelling days - or was she abducted by Aliens; nobody knows.

The idea of the 'It girl' was first personified by actress Clara Bow in the movie 'It' (1927) which helped usher in the age of the flapper girl in the roaring 20's, also personified by wild child Louise Brooks, strong, opinionated and sexy. 
The role of the vivacious, sexual, youth-quake is something every teenage girl must live up to, and tame due to the countless magazines and music videos depicting this type of personality
Over the years there have been many 'It girls' who have captured our hedonistic times, such as Kate Moss, Twiggy, Cornelia Guest, Paris Hilton, Kendall Jenner... but there are even more examples of tragic lives cut short due to the pressures and seductions of fame, such as, Gia, Donyale Luna, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Peaches Geldof and Edie Sedgwick.          
  
Teddy Bears Live Forever captures the life of a faded 'It girl' called April who is suffering from multiple personality disorder. House bound she struggles with the voices in her head which brings to light her severe traumas. Even though April is not a virgin, one of her personalities is; and that personality, called 'Sam' wants to desperately lose her virginity. Watch as April sets out on her journey in order to quiet down forever the diabolical voices in her head.

Teddy Bears Live Forever will be released in 2019
Official Website

Interview with filmmaker Greg DeLiso

Hectic Knife will be screening at the Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival

 *How did you get into making films? I saw Jurassic Park in the theatre when I was 6 and I immediately became a Spielberg-kid that was bitten by the bug.  From there it was just continuing to see more movies that I loved and seeing ones that made it seem more possible to do myself.  Indies like Clerks.

 *What inspired you to make your movie?

My friend and I were making each other laugh and making weird short films and we kind of just combined the two and that's how Hectic Knife evolved.  It almost wasn't a move.  But, a few months into shooting we realised that we had so much material and just kept adding to it, that we sort of realised we were making a movie and ten we went full force in that direction and it became a 5 year+ commitment. 

 *How has your style evolved?

Um, I'm not sure, I'd like to 

 *Tell us any strange or funny stories while making the film?

That little kids head exploding was a huge learning experience.  I had the idea of; “killing kids in the movie!” (brilliant idea right?) But, it was an homage to Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (the killing a kid idea) and the head explosion is obviously Scanners. But, to do it, I thought we should have a fake head that looked like the kid and then explode that — not realising that we could just lock the camera down, shoot the kid standing there and then remove him from the frame and then explode a ball of anything in the heads place. So, we got a mold made of this poor kids head and it cost over a thousand bucks, which was like a tenth of our budget at that point, and the whole thing could’ve been way less complicated and cheaper had we not done all the extra work making the mold. And then of course when we finally shot the scene, I only realised in editing that all that extra work to do the mold didn’t matter.

 

*The Misrule Film Movement & Pink8 manifesto bring what to mind?

Google!  Haha, hold on!  I like movies like Field of Dreams and stuff. I also like anyone that tries to make a movie and love most anyone who finishes theirs. However you get to that finish line, from Dogme 95 to this stuff to 10 years of meticulous prep like Kubrick, to stop motion in your parents basement... I don't care just make your movie and make me laugh and cry when the curtain gets pulled.

I like Harmony's Letterman appearances and his script for Kids more than most of his movies. But he seems cool. Gummy is fun, I love the slap boxing scene and he seems like he'd be fun to hang out with. 

 

*What can we expect from your next film?

Bigger, badder, better...

Interview with filmmaker Seshu KMR

127B will be screening at the Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Fesyival

*How did you get into making films?
It was a Childhood dream of narrating a interesting story around myself. Storytelling was my primary focus. Working in indian film industry from last two decades as a Sound designer, Music composer and having my own audio post production facility , its a natural progression to turn as a film maker.

*What inspired you to make your movie?
Working for a lot of esteemed directors especially Legendary film maker Ramgopal varma from india for more than 9 films , and his cult and unlearning approach of each of his film,which inspired me.

*How has your style evolved?
The city of Hyderabad in the southern region of India is a witness to history and heritage which is more than 400 years old. The city is adorned with forts, castles and forgotten tales. This ancient city fascinates and triggers the interesting aspect of treasures and haunting spirits. Being raised in Hyderabad, this spectrum of ruined forts, castles and the secrets they carry attracted me constantly. As a filmmaker, I chose the backdrop and the mystery behind these castles which led to the evolution of ‘127B’. This feature film is the first horror comedy in terms of genre in Urdu Language (Dakkani Films). My fascination and interest towards history, folklore legends combined in a feature film proved to be a very engaging and entertaining experience for me and I hope the same with the audience too. This approach of a curious thrilling touch of a treasure hunt is my evolving style as Filmmaker.

*Tell us any strange or funny stories while making the film?
Shot in an original castle more than 150 years old in ancient Hyderabad(India) . So the horror effect and treasure hunt was a very realistic Myth and strange coincidence Locations and Art designed to showcase the Hyderabadi backdrop and its age old secrets .

*The Misrule Film Movement & Pink8 manifesto bring what to mind?
I feel the approach of film making is to give a emotional experience to viewers. so any movement which supports and unlearns and breaks the conventional making is a constant learning and kicking experience.

*What can we expect from your next film?
My next project is a A horror Drama .Pre production is on and will go on floors by year end.

Interview with filmmaker David King

Purge will be screening at the Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival

How did you get into making films?
There were two parts to this actually - how I got inspired and how I actually started.

I had zero interest in movies as a kid in the 1960’s. I hated Saturday afternoon matinees with other kids running up and down the aisles. The type of movies kids were allowed to see were rubbish to me. I preferred books and art.

Then in 1968 when I was 13 years old, I was taken as part of a secondary school group to see Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It totally blew me away. Never before had I experienced such absolute awe-struck silence in a cinema. During the Dawn Of Man sequence, you could hear the tiniest squeak of a seat. Never before had I been so gob-smackingly glued to the screen as when that bone flew into the air and became a nuclear missile floating over the Earth. I walked out of the cinema that day saying to myself: “I want to do that!”

But I never actually had the chance to start doing that until the mid 1970’s when I was a Vocational Writing student at the Gordon Institute of Technology. Nearly every lunch time, the student union would screen films by the likes of Antonioni, Anderson, Bergman, Bresson, Bunel, Fellini, Fassbinder, Godard, Kurosawa, Pasolini, Resnais, Russell and Rosselini. We also saw a lot of these films as part of our course.

I slowly began to see it might be possible to make a film myself. So I borrowed a 16mm wind-up Bolex and a handful of photo flood lights from the audio-visual department and set about teaching myself how to do it.

My first 16mm black and white short film, the surreal black comedy, Daffy (16 min, 1975) was a technical mess but it ended up making back every cent of its cost through film rentals. So I was launched.


What inspired you to make your movie PURGE?
Again there are two parts to the answer - what was happening politically in Australia and the situation I found myself in as a filmmaker at the time.

I had just made and released a quasi-sci fi short called The Job (15 min, 2002) which had done very well at film festivals around the world. It was also screened on cable and community television in Australia, New Zealand and, I think, Canada. Someone even told me it was screened in Japan.

This film was the genesis of PURGE. It was set in a hypothetical future when job network agencies are under instructions to get people off the dole by any means possible and employers have carte blanche to do whatever they want with the long-term unemployed. A young unemployed artist is forced to apply for a seemingly innocent job and discovers the company offering it is killing the applicants and turning them into realistic shop window mannequins (one way of getting out of paying wages!).

PURGE postulated a parallel universe where people were artificially created and programmed for their roles in life, thus ending unemployment altogether. But sometimes the programming fails and people are unable to assume their pre-ordained roles. Those people are called Strays and treated worse than criminals. But as the heroine discovers, the system is deliberately creating Strays in order to maintain a level of fear and obedience in the population.

Both of these films were inspired by the rise of neo-conservative political rule in Australia which began with John Howard and saw a draconian crackdown on welfare.

After The Job was accepted into the London Disability Film Festival in 2003, I was told that if I was ready to make my first feature film, I could be one of the small group of filmmakers with a disability (I have a profound sensory-neural hearing impairment) to have their films four-walled for a week at the British Film Institute cinema in London.

My mother had recently died and left what I believed was enough money to be able to consider making the film - at least very cheaply. So I decided to go for broke, borrowing extra money from a couple of credit cards to just scrape in over the line. It took two years to shoot at week ends and the odd week night, and another year and a half to complete post production.


Any strange/funny stories while making the film?
Not so much in making the film as what happened when it was finished.

When I finally finished the film and turned to the London Disability Film Festival to claim the four-wall deal, I discovered the festival and its administrative body had been de-funded by the British government, and the four-wall offer was no longer open. So I was over $10,000 in debt with no cinema screening in sight.

The film gained a some enthusiastic fans and a fair bit of critical praise. But it became quickly apparent that it was not going to emulate the festival success of The Job.

Troma Entertainment picked it up for international distribution after endorsement by a critic. But, as usual with these sort of deals, Troma offer no money up front and they amortise the cost of marketing each film against all the other films they pick up at the same time, meaning your film is carrying the marketing costs of every other film in a given package. So none of the filmmakers in that package are ever likely to see any money at all.

I understood this going in, but felt the most important thing was to get the film ‘out there’. Alas, the punters on Amazon and IMDb mostly hated it, even as film critics continued to say good things about it.

I personally believe too many people have come to expect a standardised way of making films, a standardised way of storytelling, acting, cinematography, set design, music, everything, and anything that falls outside of this standardised template is considered ‘no good’. You only need to look at the fate of Mike Figgis ‘ experimental feature film Hotel to see that. People hated it because it didn’t meet their
expectations of what a film ‘should be’. Same with PURGE. I broke the rules of storytelling, drama, acting, cinematography and set design and ‘they’ didn’t like it.

But for me, experimentation is what cinema is all about and should be all about.


How has your style evolved?
I describe PURGE as an experimental narrative film...but I’ve become even more experimental since making it because I’ve realised it’s what I really want to do. I’m not interested in telling conventional stories with conventional storylines. I’m not interested in conventional acting or set design or cinematography or sound recording rules. I’m interested in bending all these rules, throwing them out the window, trying new things, doing what seems intuitively ‘right’.

Here’s a reason why. One of the cardinal rules of conventional filmmaking is always have good professional audio recording equipment on set. But quite often on PURGE we used nothing but a camera mike because we couldn’t always afford to have good audio gear.

I had a professional sound engineer go over the sound during post and he never stopped finding fault with the sound recorded on professional audio gear. But the sound recorded by the camera mike he declared to be some of the best he’d heard on any micro budget film. When I told him it was recorded with the camera mike, he refused to believe it. That, he declared, was totally impossible. So apparently, breaking the rules and doing the ‘impossible’ works.

I tend to use a lot of what other people call ‘antiquated effects’ (picture-in-picture, split screen, superimposures, tiles and text etc) simply because they don’t seem antiquated to me. I’m not interested in trends or fitting in with the latest fashions. I’ll use voice overs when everybody says don’t use voice overs. I’ll use garish colours when they’re out of fashion or dull colours when everyone else is using bright colours. I don’t do this just to be contrarian but because it’s how I see a particular film. I work very low-fi (even SD) because I haven’t the money for a computer powerful enough to run a full HD work flow. I make all of this part of my style.

Strangely enough since I’ve declared myself an ‘experimental’ filmmaker, I seem to have had more festival success and even started winning awards.

The short experimental version of PURGE - Dystopic Overload (3.10’, 2011) - was screened at festivals and galleries all around the world, and even at the Museum of Experimental Art in Mexico City.

My most recent long-form experimental sci fi short EXIT won two international awards, and a shorter experimental horror film Expunged From Collective Memory ( , 2017) won Best Editor and Best Music awards in Spain.

I’m sure the punters on Amazon and IMDb would hate those, too. They’re both on my Experimental Film page at You Tube.


The Misrule Film Movement and Pink8 bring what to mind?
Anarchy. But I like it, or parts of it.

Actually, they’re two slightly different things although often brought together. The Misrule Film Movement took place in the UK between 2010 and 2016 and saw the rise of people making movies on mobile phones and using You Tube and Facebook to promote them, also building their own cinemas and staging guerilla film screenings around the country - something we’re starting to do here in Australia because there’s no longer any other way we can get truly independent films screened.

I’m actually one night away from such a screening even as I write.

The Pink8 manifesto was apparently penned by one Fabrizio Federico and involves rules for making films similar to - but more extreme than - the Dogma 95 movement.
These rules deliberately undo all the rules of Hollywood and film school with some of the more unusual ones being - the cast must not know what your film is about and, continuity is wrong.

No wonder Mr Federico picked up PURGE for the Straight Jacket Guerilla Film Festival. A continuity person was one thing I refused to have on the set of PURGE.
I also edit all my own films, another of his rules. And much of the lighting tends to be jerry-rigged out of whatever we can find beg or borrow, just as the sets are.

So I guess the Misrule Film Movement and Pink8 are the reasons why I’m being interviewed here.


What can we expect from your next film?
More experimentation. I’m enjoying it and it’s no longer costing me the sun, the moon, the earth and half the stars.
An upcoming project is called Lost In A Borgian Labyrinth and was inspired by reading Jorge Luis Borges along with William S. Burroughs and Italo Calvino. Very intellectual, very non-mainstream, and also I hope, very intriguing.

Interview with filmmaker David Cartwright

Five nights of Waking Dreams & The Life of a Planet will be screening at the Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival

How did you get into making films? 

I have had a camera of one sort or another strapped to my hip or shoulder since i was about 13 - 14. i would gather my friends together with my beta cam and make goofy parodies. but i found that what i really enjoyed were the gags cause i loved to edit, and reedit.

What inspired you to make your movie?

I had not endeavoured to make films in a while. in the early 2000's all of my equipment had been stolen, so i feel back on photography as an outlet. then everyone had a camera when they became standard on a phone. I attempted to redefine the art of photography by layering and melding photos. Five nights of waking dreams came on the heels of a piece that would become epic a couple years later (the life cycle of the proletariat) . at the time i thought i was done with it and ready to move on, and the next film was "five nights of waking dreams." Five nights" would explore my struggles dealing with a disabling pain disorder that disrupted my life for about three quarters of a year with tons of doctor visits and needless medication that turned me into someone not myself and caused long term insomnia. trying to make lemon aide from lemons i decided that i would spend a certain amount of time every day dedicated to being creative. using stock of my life i have been accumulating over the years to create films like "trapped (aka: the life between cigarettes)" that i like to call ambient films, and stock that would help create the fantasy waking dream moments the film speaks to the feeling of inadequacy, self doubt, spirituality, and hopelessness by accentuating the dull mundane existence of a life plagued by periods of extreme fatigue and pain. the hope was to reach an audience who may feel the same way sometime and you are not alone, while educating people on the emotional effects of this debilitating pain disorder. while trying to apply the techniques that i had developed while exploring new ways of presenting photography. it is the film that helped me to realise that the narrative film genre has become so formulaic that it has committed suicide and that a new dialog should be explored. one that speaks in raw emotive transference, making you feel a movie as opposed to seeing a movie.

The film "life of a Planet" is an extension of a previous film "the life cycle of the proletariat" which were created as abstracted social commentaries meant to reflect the world as it is and present the cold harshness of our existence in hopes to motivate people to create change in our behaviour and our world. the 'proletariat' film explores our social violence through economy, industrial food production, commercialisation and exploitation of every facade of our lives and the lives around us. "life of the planet" examines the life of the sphere called a planet and the life it has given birth to. the film starts with the big bang and lends examples of how the constant evolution and destruction of life on mass through catastrophes that created dramatic climate change and extinction. it shows how we evolved in a violent and amoral world to create an intelligent species that turns that violence on each other and then the planet it's self and exposes how we could be the next extinction event in hopes that people will be ready to change the predicted out come of the film. the film was inspired by science and climate deniers and the onset of a new dark ages brought forth by bad politics and crude oil. The films are produced and presented as art as an excuse to be gutter-ally visceral an as art not as offensive to the viewer and were intended to be viewed with Chroma depth 3 - d glasses.

How has your style evolved?

My style has changed in an organic evolution from early beta, to video poetry (like "no salvation" from the mid 1990's) as technology has made many more editing techniques available to the kitchen table studio. my goals have always remained the same. produce films with free software and available materials with no budget. To prove that anyone can make a film, and if we do there is no need to watch another four franchise film again. Though now my works seem to sometimes border ambiguity of image and focus on colour and light.

Tell us any strange or funny stories while making the film?

While creating five nights i scored the film with classical music from the masters. But i knew obtaining a good score would be difficult and you certainly can not market a film with someone else's copy written performances. so i reached out. first to Alex Ferris and the orchestra who appear in the film then i managed to touch base with an amazing composer i had produced music videos for in the 90's Steve Kusaba. we had not talked for many years. now we talk to one another two - three times a week. and we have collaborated on every film since "five nights of waking dreams" and in exchange i have produced a mountain of music videos with him. we are now very good friends who for years 'almost' knew each other and now it seems as though we always did know each other.

The Misrule Film Movement & Pink8 manifesto bring what to mind?

I can honestly say that i was not familiar with either until now. However now having looked over the manifesto i can admit that this is the way i have always worked. no budgets, no scripts,etc. matter a fact the sale line for the film "the life cycle of the proletariat"  is ' no lights, no actors, just real life and the film is compromised of 100% stock. i have never written a script in my life and i gave up on writing synopsis in 1995. so it seems fitting we should having a q&a. when i managed a cable cast studio in the early to mid nineties, no budget - low fi films were what i loved t seek out and broadcast with out the approval of the conservative board. but being a punk i did it anyway all the time and became known locally for being the guy that would help market your avante, underground, bizarre, or unusual film. 

What can we expect from your next film?

I am currently collaborating with Steve Kusaba to create a film about the evil ways of the ruling class that will feature commentaries interjected with music video i have produced in coordination with Steve based on his 48 hour rock opera "centrifugal Satz Clock" and i am simultaneously producing several shorts and gearing up to begin converting some vhs to create the third instalment of my film series 'memoirs in vhs'

Interview with filmmaker Sam M Bell

Trash Arts Killers will be screening at the Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival

*How did you get into making films?

When I was young i wanted to tell stories and felt film was the best way to try, so from the age of 11 i began to write and attempt to make features at a young age, before actually making my first feature when I was 18 and learning my mistakes along the way.

*What inspired you to make your movie?

I wanted to showcase some of the filmmakers who work with Trash Arts, with a range of strange collection of short films.

*How has your style evolved?

For me style depends on the film, but each time we make a film we learn from the mistakes, right now I love making docu-horrors, doc drama as with a horror tinge. 

*The Misrule Film Movement & Pink8 manifesto bring what to mind?

The Pink8 manifesto reminds me of Dogma95 and also Im a massive fan of improv within horror and comedy, it can be truly liberating.

*What can we expect from your next film?

We currently have Lonely Hearts out with are sales agent, that's a docu horror about a reality show. We also in post production have Millennial killer a improvised horror and Toxic Schlock coming from Troma soon..

Interview with filmmaker Sanja Savic

Our Fathers, Mothers and Their Children will be screening at the Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival

*How did you get into making films?
I studied dramaturgy on Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. Even though, at the beginning of my studies, I was more interested for theatre (dramaturgy on FDA includes both film and theatre), but during the studies I developed my film interests and met interesting people, who are now important part of the crew: Marija Momić (DP), Jovana Filipović (film editor), Lazar Arsović (sound designer), Pavle Popov (composer) and Goran Filipaš (producer).

*What inspired you to make your movie?
The film takes place on the border between Republika Srpska and Federation of B&H, which are two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a very suitable ground for the increase of car theft. So, as I am originally from that place, I wanted to make a film about those complicated social and ethnic relations that even include post-war syndrom.


*How has your style evolved?
As a screenwriter, I always admired Aristotle-oriented writers who make interesting story structures like Paul Schrader, Anders Thomas Jensen or Guillermo Arriage. But, on the other side, I realized that my own style is something closer to European artistic movie, like Romanian new wave, Yugoslav Black wave or the authors like Ken Loach (let's mention his screenwriter Paul Laverty), Fatih Akin or Lukas Moodisson (for his early films). Of course, I wanted to write about the real people from my society.


*Tell us any strange or funny stories while making the film?
Oh, we were very limited in both budget, time and space. There were many funny situations, but I don't know if they are proper to talk about them in public...


*The Misrule Film Movement & Pink8 manifesto bring what to mind?
Now, when most of the film equipment is available to the filmmakers, it is inadmissible to say that we don't have a proper budget for the film. Of course, that does not mean that we should make skin-deep films. When the budget is low, the organization needs to be high level if you want a narrative movie. Internet helps people reach so many different films, and festivals like Straight Jacket Guerilla is one of them.


*What can we expect from your next film?
I working on hand drawn full-length animation film „The Story of Mika the Ant“. Hopefully, after ten years, it will have it's premiere until the end of this year.