REMEMBERING FABRIZIO FEDERICO - THE SELF DESTRUCTIVE FILMMAKER SABOTEUR WHO DID IT ALL WRONG IN THE RIGHT WAY

The cult filmmaker's newest film Teddy Bears Live Forever is being released in 2019

There’s never been a filmmaker like Fabrizio Federico. Chances are, there won’t be again. Not only is there an argument for this Brit being the 2000's lost movie-maker, there’s also the debate of him being the filmmaker that killed off the idea of 20th century cinema. As he explains it ''There is a new type of filmmaker that has been reborn and has replaced the traditional filmmaker from the 20th century, more bipartisan. I am a DJ Director, my passion is to glue video into a collage of vision, concentrating on personalities, mixing the styles of MTV, the News & Youtube vlog filmmaking together ''. His newest film is about a faded ''It girl'' suffering from schizophrenia due to an alien abduction and decides that one of her personalities must lose her virginity, even though she's already lost it.

Self-sabotage

That Fabrizio Federico is a star-shaped jigsaw piece in a square hole should have been clear from the off ever since surviving a house fire as a child. On the eve of the release of his feature film debut 'Black Biscuit' in 2011 he described making the film as being like ''Russian roulette”. He'd originally planned to make the film in North Korea but was denied a visa. He ended up filming in Nottingham with a Greek pimp and falling out of a tree and breaking his foot. Shooting the movie on toy Fisher-Price camera's and mobile phones, his apartment became a haven for the street superstars that he would meet on the streets and cast in his film, including a ping-pong champion, a dominatrix and Big Issue magazine sellers. Somehow he managed to re-finish the film after his computer exploded on the day of Michael Jackson's death.

Early perfection

This week the filmmaker announced that his next movie will be released in 2019. There’s the odd lollop of early Harmony Korine. The groove of Xavier Dolan. The cut and paste ingenuity of Jean Luc Godard. Arguably it’s stranger than any of his previous releases. He is the bedsit Lars Von Trier. Federico represents the filmmaker that for years chewed off his own limbs, simultaneously while editing footage blindfolded, listening to exorcisms on a diet of weed and yogurt, all on a micro-budget.

Raised on punk, emboldened by hip-hop, dance, free to be whatever he wanted – used to the ‘push the envelope, make magic happen, give it away for free’ ideal. On the eve of an era that saw YouTube filmmakers convert their vision into a world wide audience. But Federico delivered cinema folly in spades.

Doggedness, dadaism & drugs

In the beginning, he only screened his films at week-day film clubs, or left copies of his homemade DVD's on tables at bars and gigs. Then after his film 'Pregnant' screened in Essex and caused a riot his films were blacklisted from theatres, starting with a run at the Genesis cinema being cancelled and. Subsequently he has developed a large following in Mexico. 

Everything Federico did was tangential. When Empire magazine requested him for an interview, he agreed only on the condition if he would be asked the same questions as put to Stanley Kubrick during the making of The Shining. When he was invited at the Raindance Film Festival he arrived on crutches wearing a T-shirt that read, ‘If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport’. He refused to appear on children’s television. He claimed that YouTube is more popular then Jesus.

Such contrariness and blind scepticism felt genuinely exciting in the film industry that had turned dull.

He pulled karate moves and danced like a Native American shaman. It was presumed he liked drugs. Maybe. Maybe not. “LSD isn't a drug” he said confusingly, but he claiming it cured him from sleepwalking. 

Subsequently he went to the Bermuda triangle to get married, and learnt about voodoo and mysticism. Later also recording the soundtrack to his film 'Loon' at Aleister Crowley's abandoned Boleskine House, creating Zodiac Killer art, and introducing his cinema alter ego called Jett Hollywood ''a filmmaker from Mars''. After two films he released a suicide note which resulted in a missing persons investigation when the note went viral. 

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Not that he ever thought he was weird. “filmmakers like me should be the norm” said Federico recently. “I think it’s weird that very average, banal films are the norm, Im looking for cinematic nirvana”.

Official Website

THE LAST MOVIE - THE HOLY GRAIL OF CINEMA

Punk Filmmaker Fabrizio Federico praises Dennis Hopper's unsung masterpiece

Shot in Peru in 1970 in a narcotic haze, Dennis Hopper's follow up to Easy Rider is the purest experimental mainstream film ever released in Hollywood. Problem is not many people have seen this gem. It has been in exile for 50 years, in limbo as a low resolution bootleg DVD, which is how I first came across it, but it changed my life.

I first watched this amazing movie alone in a school library and it lit a firecracker under me, I had to make a movie! I give The Last Movie complete responsibility for inspiring me to make a film unlike any other. So with no experience what so ever I decided to finish the job Hopper had started in 1970. Now in 2011 I finally completed my first feature film Black Biscuit, I tore up the rule book on cinema and made an anti film with non-actors, no script, shot on mobile phones and toy cameras about a filmmaker lost in a wasteland of prostitution, money and sleaze.

The fact that a major Hollywood studio produced this psychedelic midnight movie is astounding, but once released it was misunderstood, and buried deep; even though it's lyrical beauty is evident in every frame. Easy Rider captured a cultural zeitgeist but The Last Movie could have changed the course of cinema forever if it had been handled differently.

The PINK8 cinema manifesto was born out of this, and just like Hopper; who already had a reputation for wildness, I threw it all away in a hurricane of spotlight, ego and hallucinogenics, but in the process I saved my damned soul, at odds with a system that still didn't understand real youth-quake provoking cinema, and the fact that Arbelos films have had the balls to make a move on re-releasing this masterpiece is better then twenty Christmas put together!!

To me The Last Movie is an allegory about the world as a whole and how it is destroying it's self, and becoming more self conscious and media trained which is boring as fuck. Hopper will always personify to me the true meaning of what an artist truly is; mercurial, insanely talented and untamed. 

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE ** LOON [FILM] (2017) ''PC CULTURE IS DEAD!''

LOON (2017) Dir: Fabrizio Federico

''It was a tough shoot, there was a major power struggle going on during shooting, non of the cast parted as friend's, we all hate each other. I was even stabbed with a fork during the first week. Everyone has blocked each other on Facebook and the ouija board party was a big mistake.''

Director Fabrizio Federico is an anti-filmmaker, his movies are littered with mistakes, camera blurs and noise but its real life. No script, non-actors and lots of bad blood. 
'There was some major sexual tension going on between the cousins.''

At the core of the film lies a 'folie à deux' relationship between two cousins, 16 year old kleptomaniac Charlie Sheen (who wishes to be called 'Keith' - even though nobody respects his wishes) and his poison minded 18 year old cousin Georgia, who's aggressive, cunning, sexual personality has hypnotised her younger cousin into doing anything she wants ''always do whatever I say, remember that.''

Charlie has a history of petty theft and violent thoughts.

''Charlie was actually stealing in the shopping scenes and we filmed guerrilla style when we got told not to, it's hypocritical that ''they'' can CCTV film us all day long but I cant make my movies wherever the fuck I want, that's why the film looks like CCTV footage.''

These teenagers are racist, homophobic and plain evil in many guises and the film perfectly captures that evil journey through the mind of a lost teenager. ''Political correctness is now DEAD, it started out as a good thing but it's spawned a bunch of liberal minded cry babies who dont know how to shut the fuck up about what offends them.'' 

From a psychoanalysis level the 'pleasure principle' of Black Biscuit is now given over to the 'death drive' theory founded by Sigmund Freud, believing that life's motivation for some is driven by an aggressive desire to self-destruct. An eerie cosmos and an unpredictable place to be, full of ugly faces, tiny monsters and lost souls.

LOON will be release on Halloween, October 31th internationally.
http://fabriziofederico.co.uk/

CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED - The Story of LOON

The flower children in this film are young rotten, racist & rude. 

Folie à deux (/fɒˈli ə ˈduː/; pronunciation: ​[fɔli a dø];
French for "When Two People Go Insane Together''.

At the core of the film LOON lies a folie à deux relationship between two cousins, 16 year old Charlie Sheen (who wishes to be called 'Keith' - but nobody ever calls him) and his poison minded 18 year old cousin Georgia Sheen; who's aggressive, cunning, sexual personality has hypnotised her younger cousin into doing anything. 

''I wanted the film to reflect a prescription medication weekend, it's shook up in a black & white salad bowl''.
Fabrizio Federico

Charlie is on prescription medication (you decide what his diagnosis is) and his mother (a serial killer obsessed twin) is his gate keeper. He is a walking ball of karma. Surrounded by his twisted family (the whole street is populated by the Sheen family) Charlie's behavior is becoming darker. 

Charlie is dumb, so dumb in fact that it fools people. 
He has become obsessed with learning how to play the drums and to mirror his mod teen idol Keith Moon, one of the wildest drummers of the 60's and who's generation experimented with the unraveling of social and conventional modes.

An experimental melodrama with presidential assassination bulletins, Charlie is a kleptomaniac and a compulsive liar living in an incestuous tight knit family who have created a pillow world for him to sink deeper into his lifestyle. Light, love and protection are missing in both their worlds. 
While unemployed his loner life is largely based on crime, daydreaming and pleasing Georgia's superior superwoman Nietzsche mind. 

Charlie is fucked......but how fucked?
_______________________________________________________________________________

Year of the Rooster: 2017

Isis attacks throughout the world
Fake news - The wars on words

AI (artificial intelligence) - cool and creepily real

Donald Trump becomes president

Brexit 

North Korea's nuclear threats

Going Underground ** The Devils Filmmaker // Fabrizio Federico

When filmmaker Fabrizio Federico takes to his battered camcorder he is stepping into another world. The British born movie-maker directs with such exuberance it seems as if he and the camera are bound together by a magic spell. 

Federico moved to Italy when he was five years old after surviving a house fire, after which the gifted child soon took to painting and learning guitar at an early age. By the age of fifteen he had become a teen prodigy at guitar and art, appearing live at many jazz and classical venues including the prestigious Boston Hatch Shell in the USA, where he moved lived for ten years. Here he discovered underground cinema. This talented and complex ace with a wicked sense of humor has become a symbol for DIY revolt. Driven and self taught Federico is a visual-maestro with a globe trotting streak, having already filmed in Spain, Cuba, Hungary, France, Poland, Germany, Bermuda and Morocco. All his works are self financed by banks instead of producers or film studios. 

His raw style includes the complete disposal of scripts, actors or any other cinema norm. His debut film Black Biscuit (2012) became notorious. Confrontations would ensure at the mere mention of the movie between exuberant cinema fans, both rigid and spirited, young and old on internet film forums, in vitriolic reviews, even on radio and at public appearances. Especially over the merits of cult and experimental cinema and its integrity in mainstream cinema and media coverage value, a phenomenon very similar to the French New Wave or Dogme 95 era. 

  

By the time his next feature Pregnant (2015) was released his reputation for being a possessed talent created problems and controversy in rigid mainstream film institutions. During Pregnant's pre-production arson charge surfaced which coincided with his ill health and isolation around this time. By this time he had created a Ziggy Stardust alter-ego called Jett Hollywood (a filmmaker from Mars) who was responsible for the films The Evolution Of The Earth Angel and later Anarchy In The UK. Jett Hollywood committed cinema suicide.

In 2016 Federico ran the first Straight Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival, which incorporated experimental filmmakers from across the world. His films have been called psychedelic, nightmarish and angelic, all executed with a Peter Pan sense of wonder. He has even been called ''the devils filmmaker''. His PINK8 film manifesto even caused his films to be banned from Universities after it was discovered that film groups were screening his films on campus. 

Here is a look at some of his works:

 

Underground Cinema - Star of 2016 Fabrizio Federico

Fabrizio Federico - 13 Things You Didnt Know About Him

Fabrizio Federico's - Favourite Books

Down & Dirty Pictures - Peter Biskind
Go Ask Alice - Anonymous
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Childhoods End - Arthur C. Clarke
The Wind In The Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Beyond Good and Evil - Freidrich Nietzsche
Lilith - J. R. Salamanca
Helter Skelter - Vincent Bugliosi
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls - Peter Biskind
The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley
Cries Unheard - Gitta Sereny
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Adventures Of Roberto Rossellini - Tag Gallagher
The Dead Zone - Stephen King
Crowds and Power - Elias Canetti
Edie: American Girl - Jean Stein
Pimp - Iceberg Slim
The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Atrocity Exhibition - J. G. Ballard
Confessions of an English Opium Eater - Thomas De Quincey
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker - James Gavin
Last Exit to Brooklyn - Hubert Selby, Jr.
The Doctrine of Fascism - Benito Mussolini
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
The Cult of Violence - John Pearson
The Talented Mr Ripley  - Patricia Highsmith
Brighton Rock - Graham Greene
Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh
12 Days on the Road: The Sex Pistols - Noel E. Monk
Story of the Eye - Georges Bataille
Say You Love Satan - David St. Clair
Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
Wiseguy - Nicholas Pileggi

A Pop Symphony for Film // Pregnant - Directed by Fabrizio Federico

''If a tree falls in the forest but no one’s there to Instagram it, did it happen at all?''
PREGNANT [official website]: http://pregnantmovie.moonfruit.com/

Fabtizio Federico - The Lizard King of Underground Cinema

For anyone wanting to make your own masterpiece check out the PINK8 Manifesto // http://canvas.grolsch.com/film-works/fabrizio-federicos-pregnant-is-an-assault-on-the-senses

{} PREGNANT {} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI42DJLdQwk

 

Fabrizio Federico - Cinema War

After the recent controversies surrounding the film Pregnant, opinion is rampant on this new style of cinema that originated with the PINK8 manifesto.

Its a call to arms to up and coming filmmakers - pure and simple.

 

Fabrizio Federico - Film Interview gone WRONG

                                                         

https://vimeo.com/145287576

The No School Film Movement

Official Website 

Fabrizio Federico wants to slash old ideas and start again. One way of doing this, in his case, is writing a manifesto that states that film school is poison, films shouldn’t be shot on HD, and that continuity is wrong. The result, as you can see from his latest project’s trailer below, is seemingly a lo-fi oddity that harks back to the underground cinema of Richard Kern and his ‘cinema of transgression’ cohorts.

Described as “a deliberate assault on the senses”, Pregnant is a contemporary tale about technology addiction in the 21st century, which Federico has been working on for over two years, with the ostensible intention of striking at the heart of today's iPhone-clutching generation.

Whether you find this kind of thing infuriatingly pretentious or bracingly provocative, a film that wants to shake up the system can’t be ignored. Why? Because how else will we discover a new, game-changing cinematic language that upends the status quo? Roll on the revolution...

Pink8 Manifesto:

Film school is poison.
Look for street superstars to be your cast.
Your film must be made on no budget, just sporadic money.
The director must raise "get-by" money by finding a job that challenges their ethics.
The director must have a main character role in the film.
Short films are NOT acceptable, it MUST be a feature.
The cast must NOT know what your film is about.
Filming must be done without any preparation or a traditional script.
Your film must be 95% improvised.
Special lighting is not acceptable.
No HD Cameras
No 3D
No Green Screen
The director must edit the film alone.
Mistakes are beautiful.
Continuity is wrong.
Bewildering, vague, self-indulgent, plot-less, risky, egotistical, limpid, raw, ugly, and imperfect are perfect.
Technical film experience is inessential.
Answer to one person only—yourself.

Fabrizio Federico - Poster

Fabrizio Federcio - War Art from childhood

The Milk Man (2013) dir: Fabrizio Federico

The Milk Man is an abandoned vérité film project directed by Fabrizio Federico. The movie focused on a milk man who spiked local families milk bottles with LSD on his morning route.

''It was a mix between a Disney fantasy and the JFK assassination Zapruder footage. I wanted to have a film where all the characters drank the same mystery milk drink that the Droogs drank in A Clockwork Orange. It would be fascinating to see whole families relate to one another while their all on LSD, it could be heavenly or catastrophic. I had a scene showing a character with down syndrome becoming normal while on acid, and a grandmother giving spiked milk and cookies to Santa Claus, it could have been my masterpiece.'' Fabrizio Federico

The project was abandoned after Federico was contacted by The Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers (RABDF) who were notified about the film and threatened to sue him over alleged defamation regarding the films subject. 

The project was abandoned midway through production. The footage has now deteriorated  and only this piece from the intended soundtrack survives. Featuring Fabrizio Federico on noise guitar, with a recited passage from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

PINK8 Manifesto - A Crusade on the Nature of Cinema

Pink8 Manifesto

• Film school is poison.
• Look for street superstars to be your cast.
• Your film must be made on no budget, just sporadic money.
• Mistakes are beautiful.
• The director must raise "get-by" money by finding a job that challenges their ethics.
• The director must have a main character role in the film.
• Short films are NOT acceptable, it MUST be a feature.
• The cast must NOT know what your film is about.
• Continuity is wrong.
• Filming must be done without any preparation or a traditional script.
• Your film must be 95% improvised.
• Special lighting is not acceptable.
• No HD Cameras
• No 3D
• No Green Screen
• The director must edit the film alone.
• Bewildering, vague, self-indulgent, plot-less, risky, egotistical, limpid, raw, ugly, and imperfect are perfect.
• Technical film experience is inessential.
• Answer to one person only—yourself.
  
  

Fabrizio Federico - Doing time

Fabrizio Federico - Devil May Care

''Cinema needs to become more random, more mad. I've stopped trying to figure out life, we're all insane thats all Im really sure about''
Pregnant (Official Trailer) 2015
http://pregnantmovie.moonfruit.com/

Fabrizio Federico - Punk Cinema