The UK's Underground Film Scene is experiencing a rebirth recently with many diverse and exciting collectives, filmmakers and DIY screenings taking the industry by storm: http://pink8manifesto.blogspot.co.uk/…/the-rebirth-of-uks-f…
Encouraging the Glam Punk Alternative ethic that anyone can take part in Cinema and now is the time for you to do it.
Since 1878 (which = 6) the birth of cinema has danced with many partners, splintering the art of filmmaking down many different paths, similar to how tarot cards, the Qabalah and other jaberwockery that was persecuted on its first introduction. But from its birth certain filmmakers have brought to the table a more tribal Wicca ingredient to mystic filmmaking. Especially proponents of the counterculture.
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law''
Aleister Crowley
Exploring insanity, ecstasy, nihilism, dreams, carnal and occult practices, their subjects and topics are far far away from mainstream cinema, prefering to create a visual approximation to eternity.
Tapping into an energy similar to a UFO that on first viewing may seem alien, but there lies its true magick, and rewards. Many consider these films avant garde, spacey and cosmic, with goo-goo sights and third eye disturbed states of minds, but altered states of consciousness have always pushed the boundaries of creativity.
Showing a way of life beyond the artificial veil of a fake plastic society and displays the divine Babylon of life. With such tools as ESP, ley lines, hexagrams, sitars, astral travel, Eastern mysticism, past lives, LSD and other supernatural invocations. An impending apocalypse at the crossroads of cinema was bound to be introduced to open minded audiences, almost as a form of telepathy classes into the unknown.
These filmmakers guide the viewer in the same manner as a healer would. Creating a rhythm of sound and vision that a shaman, sorcerer or witch doctor would be proud of. In their films all the children are insane, on the edge of the city, ''I was in a German psychiatric clinic when I received inspiration to go out and make a film, and it healed me'' says the youngest filmmaker Fabrizio Federico in our list.
FILM SUBMISSIONS: Straight-Jacket Guerrilla Film Festival 2016 is now open for Feature Film submissions and Music Videos. It's FREE to submit till March 1st.
To submit your work for the 2016 Festival's consideration, simply email us a YouTube link to your Feature film (must be over 40min in length) or to your Music Video (must be from a real band).
Please also include your production info, bio, website and film synopsis to:
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
The Godfather of the Exploding Cinema collective, plus in addition to
making films such as Maldoror and curating screenings and events, he wrote the mind-blowing
history of British underground filmmaking called Subversion:
The Definitive History of Underground Cinema that is mandatory reading
for any underground film nut. A true hands on maverick.
Craig Roberts
Compelling
character actor who has now turned his hand at directing and fits the
mold of being the perfect Trojan Horse to enter the
mainstream film industry and shake it up from the inside. His debut
feature
film Just Jim is a darkly funny coming of age story shot on a low budget in Wales.
Roberts is a self taught filmmaker and a strong advocate for supporting Welsh
cinema.
Daniel Fawcett & Clara Pais
Defining the
ideology that two heads are better than one, this power team are the
founders of The London Underground Film Festival and Film Panic
magazine. Experimenters of the independent film vanguard with some of
the trippiest films to come out in recent memory such as their mind
bending feature debut Savage Witches.
Fabrizio Federico
Crashing together
the poetic and the strange; whether its making micro budget features
about alienation, sex and death cult philosophies in debut Black Biscuit or counting down to generational Armageddon in the form of technology and social media addiction with new film Pregnant. He is the founder of the Pink8 Manifesto which encourages new filmmakers to basically "Turn on, tune in, and drop out" . Get in touch with their inner improvised shamanand lose your mind.
Tony Burke
The
filmmaker you love to hate. His thought provoking works have caused
scandal and bewilderment, hence an artist in the truest sense of the
word. Mixing together loneliness, beauty and desire. A body of work that
captures the everyday absurdity of where bizarre circumstances can lead
you. His skillful portrayals on the poignancy of life can be
experienced in his latest films The Fox and Him.
Scotland's
mean streets are kicked in the balls by the presence of Mr Mackenzie's
camera. Hip Hop and Cinema come crashing down the rabbit hole as the
dystopian odyssey of Dimention Zero captures the wilderness of an
hallucination called life. Beautifully shot on anything that he could
get his hands on, depicting the crash city youth of hoodies, police and
music. Its final message sublimely true; We are all art, as soon as we
embrace ourselves.
Ben Charles Edwards
Whether
its Fantasy, B Movies, Avant Garde or Dark Comedy there's no genre that
this filmmaker cant master with Zen like ease. Embracing stylistic
glamour with the unpredictability of Underground Cinema. His debut
feature film Set The Thames on Fire displays an impressive
claustrophobic disjointed atmosphere and at the center of all this a
fearless ring leader weaves his directorial magic.
''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/
The beauty of Underground Cinema is that it is driven by unpolitical and immediate needs and slides like a shooting star into dream worlds with no social boundaries. Savage Witches (co-directed by Daniel Fawcett & Clara Pais) looks for the truth that comes with being a seeker.
The film proves what an unstoppable and uncompromising creative force the Fawcett & Pais team legitimately is. They are truly a transatlantic collective. Organizers of the The London & Porto Underground Film Festival's, editors of the influential One+One Filmmakers Journal and co-directors CINE-REBIS. They are on fire. Savage Witches tells the tale of Gretchen and Margarit, two misunderstood psychedelic school girls who would like to be able to play and float on a river forever and ever instead of working and adhering to their tyrannic school principals rules. They dress up and play fight, spit on what society thinks about their other worldliness, both looking like wild rabid carnival characters. Its cinematography is a kaleidoscope of HD, DV, Super8 and their favorite format VHS! The film perfectly reflects what a prison society can often be like to a fertile young independent creative mind. How curiosity, imagination and craziness can often be put on trial. Movie's such as Savage Witches follow a tradition similar to other maverick filmmakers like Věra Chytilová and Derek Jarman who tackled the teenage psyche in all it's anarchic glory. Casting spells on all who watch these films, especially those in search of the magic that will set them free. Purified by the rain, following the arrows, slogans such as ''Let's destroy the World'' flash across the skies, erasing humankind and all its dead ideas and forgotten history. Tempting you to fly with them ** gimme your hands cause you're wonderful!!
Darkness + Silence The duo are currently filming back to back projects The Kingdom of Shadows and Black Sun. ''Making a movie is an amazing thing, it’s magic! We never suffer from writer’s block or a lack of ideas, we are interested in so many things and there never seems to be enough time to do them all''.
Savage Witches is a film that wants to burst out of the screen and cross over into life, to have the vision and experience of the world enriched and transformedby the artifice of cinema. But when is too much freewill considered dangerous? When does freedom become manipulated and sold to the masses? Respectively a film like Savage Witches will never have that problem. History is dead, long live infinity. For more info Visit:http://theundergroundfilmstudio.co.uk/
I challenge all you coward hack-job film critics to go out and make a feature film.
Film criticism is DEAD. It's a sheepish way to spend a life. Why not
create a film? Especially If your so passionate about movies, think
about it, who better to make a film then a movie critic.
Nobody
cares what critics think anymore. You're an extinct species. Stop
hibernating, film critics need to graduate into making movies. Think
what great films you could make with all your expertise too.
A similar thing happened during the French New Wave. The film critics woke
up!!! C'mon you can do it!! Make a movie before it's too late. You only
live once, it's a fantastic experience. This manifesto is so easy you dont even need experience, just balls. Give it a shot, go on now take your baby steps and stop being scared.
I have never stopped to look back for guidance or judgement from any film critic. Make me proud Fabrizio Federicohttp://pregnantmovie.moonfruit.com/
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 is a young independent director from the UK with a penchant for off-the-wall micro budget filmmaking. He made his first feature film, entitled Black Biscuit,
after getting deported from America. That movie promised to represent
“The Future of Cinema” and bore with it the “Pink8″ manifesto, a sort of
spiritual successor to Lars Von Trier’s Dogme 95 avant-garde movement. As described on the Pink8 website, the philosophy dictates (in part):
Film school is poison.
Look for street superstars to be your cast.
Your film must be made on no budget, just sporadic money.
The cast must NOT know what your film is about.
Your film must be 95% improvised.
No HD cameras.
Mistakes are beautiful.
Continuity is wrong.
Bewildering, vague, self-indulgent, plot-less, risky, egotistical, limpid, raw, ugly and imperfect are perfect.
True to this mantra, Federico’s movies feature casts of “university
students and homeless people, prostitutes – just random people [he] met
on the street.” He says his filmmaking style spawns from his musical
background and engages in a striking but polarizing punk rock aesthetic
that’s reflected in his use of sound, color and imagery. This
self-described “car crash” methodology even extends to post-production;
sometimes, Fabrizio says, he edits his movies blindfolded. Other times,
he edits on LSD. Federico was kind enough to take time out to speak with me about his
newest projects, the future of the movie industry and the tangibility of
human consciousness. ~ Søren As always, you can subscribe to our podcast using iTunes. Alternatively, you can check out the interview online or download it here. Happy listening!
Semi-staged interviews, improvised dramatic scenes, tormented LSD romance, and insular self-reflectivity, regarding the modern problem of social media and technology addiction.
A riff on myth and identity.
Pregnant is an albatross that will squeeze the effete out of cinema. It transcends mere intellectual art house films and strikes a note very similar to watching an album similar to something by De La Soul, DJ Shadow or The Wu Tang Clan. Federico has called himself a ''DJ film director'', its's vibe is shamanic and surreal. What has emerged is a mixed soup of urban chaos, pop, and disturbing psychedelic visuals mixed with contemplation and silence. A whole new recipe for cinema.
The film showcases the contrast between old and new society. On one hand you have the new demented 24/7 media anarchy that has emerged in the wake of the Youtube & Facebook social media generation, and on the other hand you the lone figure of the desert drifter, who is free from the stress of society and technology, silently roaming the desert and living in the ''now''. Alone from distractions and able to connect with the idea of reaching your personal Zen.
Mixing the rituals and beliefs of Shamanism and Pagan rites to lead you on a surreal journey,
composed of movements depicting a trip through a VHS mix tape.
An enthralling mess, only too happy to make you cuckoo. But its also something more important that demands repeated viewing similar to such films like Easy Rider, Gummo or Memento. It's Federico's 'Pop Symphony for Film’.
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.
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