Founder of Squat Betty the enthusiastic Richard Sandling talks about his exciting experimental film festival opening soon. Book Here
What gave u the idea to start Squat Betty? I set it up originally as a monthly screening event in London before Covid and Lockdown put it on hiatus and closed my venue. Now I have relaunched it as a festival in Essex, UK. I’d been to a few stand alone events for art films and I found that the nights were not great experiences. They were either a bit dry and too reverential of the subject matter or, more commonly, they were a war of attrition with the audience as if it was somehow a failure on the part of the organisers if I enjoyed myself as they made us sit through a million films, all of which were at least 17 minutes long and turgid and the whole evening seemed to go on forever and there were never any breaks. It was relentless and made you think “I can’t take this anymore”, but not because the content was too much to deal with, but because the event itself was shoddy and gave no thought whatsoever to the people who had paid to be there. I have never understood why, if you are doing something that might be challenging to people – be it shocking, offensive, jarring or simply just something they are not used to seeing, that you don’t make everything else about the event welcoming and comfortable wherever possible. I appreciate you want the right setting and the ambience to fit the mood of the work you present, but 99% of the time we are not doing immersive theatre - and the audience are not your enemy. So I made sure it was audience friendly. I ended up doing my night at a Lucha Wrestling School and Fetish Club, which worked really well for the vibe of the event as well as a great space to screen and hang out. I also kept the screenings to 1hr. My main objectives and hopes were to first and foremost showcase interesting work from the world of experimental film for people who would be interested in coming to see that, because it is hard to know the best (or any) places to find screenings like this, especially if you are interested in seeing what filmmakers are doing now rather than attending BFI style retrospectives of established films and filmmakers. I wanted to see what people were doing and give them a place to be seen.
While I included films from all over the world, I also wanted to create a networking social scenario where filmmakers who's work was being shown could come down and introduce their works and meet other filmmakers and create personal and professional connections. I also hoped that an experimental night might also encourage people to go out of their comfort zones and start making experimental films - or make more of them knowing there would be a screening opportunity for them to show their work.
As a filmmaker myself, I find applying to festivals frustrating because theres always some weird reasons they do or dont want your movies. It's too long, it's not long enough, theres too much blue, theres not enough blue, you need to have credits, you dont need to have credits. JUST ASK FOR FUCKING FILMS! You know you've got a festival about trees but for some reason you cant submit to the 'Films About Trees Festival' cose of some fucking nonsense that they've put in place. So I made sure there were no barriers to content. If its experimental send it in cose I want to see it. The inly potential constraint was time. I only had an hour slot for the screenings and at the festival the blocks will be multiples of an hour, so if the film was very long I simply wouldnt have time to include it.
It was also important to me that my festival is free for filmmakers to submit film to because I dont think its fair to expect filmmakers to pay to play. I think that there are already enough gatekeepers and arbitrary obstacles in the way of getting films made and out there without being part of the problem by adding to the problematic and pervasive ostracisation of working class and & poor filmmakers from the industry - and an entry fee, frankly, is unacceptibly exclusionary. I myself cant afford to pay to submit to festivals so I dont expect people to do the same to mine. Filmmakers will frequently tell me off for this saying ''its only a fiver, its only a tenner, its only twenty quid'' but Im applying to loads, possibly hundreds, and it racks up to a lot of money I dont have. And Im not the only filmmaker in this situation. Often when I mention this those other filmmakers will say you need the money to do the job anyway as thats simply the admin of filmmaking, and whilst they may be right its never poor filmmakers telling me this - and I think it really speaks to the normalization of the middle classes of the film industry that ''its only £500 a year for festivals'' is genuinely not seen as a big deal and how priviledged they are to be able to have this complete lack of self awareness and financial security when this is a massive fiscal brickwall in the path of a lot of filmmakers trying to get out there and get out there in the industry.
And these were the parameters with which I set up the night originally and I have carried it into the festival.
Are there a lot of avant garde filmmakers here in the UK? There are a fair few I think. I didn’t really know any personally before setting up the night, which is kinda why I did it. Purely statistically, the UK was the 6th largest contributor to my festival submissions, but one of the 2nd main source of the officially selected films. So while there may not be as many of us as elsewhere, the quality (I believe) is very high.
Which movies first got u into experimental cinema? Although I have never seen it since I caught it during a bought of insomnia as a teen in the 90s, I particularly remember being affected by a film called On The Edge Of The Horizon by Fernando Lopes which is about a pathologist in the morgue who has to autopsy the unidentified body of a murdered young man who looks like a young version of himself, which leads him to try to do his own investigation into the corpse’s life and death.
But if I had to name the main turning point in being into experimental film it would have been the first time I saw Performance as a teen. It was just the right film at the right time to really ram home that this was exactly the sort of thing I was into in terms of editing, camera work, sound, theme, mise en scene. It was a genuine game changer for my understanding of who I was and what my passions were. I saw it the same weekend I also saw Repo Man, Evil Dead and The Quiet Earth for the first time. That was definitely the weekend that changed me forever.
How do u see avant garde movies developing in the future? Tricky to know for sure because the definition of the avant garde is changing. We will always have the established stylistic language of avant garde films, but as technology evolves and the means by which we watch films and make films changes, the notion of what is “radical, unorthodox or experimental” will also have to change. For example, during lockdown I made a feature film entirely remotely, in isolation, completely via zoom. There are no establishing shots, in scene edits or cutaways. There is only the various zoom calls. In terms of accessibility, the script is arguably a fairly mainstream Kevin Smith style comedy. But the way it is filmed and edited and presented is definitely avant garde. And I feel like this is a good example of the sort of transitional period we are in at the moment. I don’t know where we will end up or what the changes will be, but I think it is exciting to wait for these new directions to start fully emerging.
Will your festival become a yearly thing? I hope so. I certainly plan to make that the case. It is my hope that it eventually grows to be a regular fixture on the local and then national and international scene. But currently I’m just looking to get the first one attended and enjoyed.
Other then Squat Betty what are some other cool avant garde festivals at the moment? To be honest, I’m not sure about specially designated ones. All the ones I’ve been accepted to are usually abroad and I can’t get there. As I mentioned, if there’s an entry fee I can’t afford to submit, so I won’t know about it. I’m happy to pay to attend as a punter, of course, but relying on FB groups to get the info about events within travelling distance to me isn’t proving the best way to know what’s going on.
Will you also be starting a magazine? I have no plans to do so and I can’t imagine I will in the future as I am busy with a million things that take up all my time and energy.
How did you go about connecting with all the filmmakers to get involved? Initially, I sent out a post on reddit asking if anyone wanted to send me a film. It wasn’t lots of people, but there were more than I needed and it was mostly all very good, varied and interesting – and it made me realise that I was right to think there was good, current content that I personally found interesting and exciting out there to screen.
Then I set up the night on FilmFreeway to get people in. As I mentioned, my desire to let anyone submit did mean I got over 900 films through to watch. And watch them I did! Did I get sent an absolute fucktonne of completely irrelevant films just because it was free? Absolutely. Did I find that a lot of people also don’t know what constitutes an experimental short film? Absolutely. But it was worth it for the large amount of high quality work I did get sent through, particularly from the filmmakers who definitely wouldn’t have submitted if I’d charged or put obstacles in their way. A lot of the films I selected, unbeknownst to me at the time of choosing, were the filmmaker’s first selection for their work at a festival, which was a great feeling to know that my event had given their filmmaking some sort of validation because this is all difficult enough and rejection and failure is often a constant, despite our definite talents, and I think it’s important to create a bit of joy and positivity in this industry wherever we can. All filmmakers were then notified and invited to attend to introduce their work, which many did. Which, again, was great for the overall experience of everyone at the event.
