Mud-slinging mars a successful MUFF

The Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF), which closed on August 29 with a successful screening of the banned film L.A. Zombie by Canadian shock auteur Bruce LaBruce – the second screening of the film at the festival – has been the subject of a vituperative attack by an individual believed to be a MUFF ex-volunteer.

On Saturday August 21, one day after the festival opened, an email was sent to a number of media outlets, including Arts Hub, by an individual identifying himself as ‘Harald Dohrn’, urging filmmakers and sponsors to boycott MUFF on the basis that “Festival director Richard Wolstencroft is a white supremacist and a Nazi apologist”.

A later email to Arts Hub made it clear that ‘Harald Dohrn’ was a pseudonym: “As you’d know by now from the auto-reply, Harald Dohrn is a fake name. I think it’s a fair precaution, given [Wolstencroft’s] enthusiastic fetishising of violence and his obviously disturbed personality.”

To support his claims, Dohrn directed readers towards a blog, Richard Wolstencroft’s Unconcealedness, which details numerous inflammatory quotes by Wolstencroft, the majority of them taken directly from his Facebook page and including screen grabs which verify their authenticity.

Such quotes include Wolstencroft’s criticism of a “faggy” character in the TV series True Blood; his casual use of the epithet “Abo” when discussing the success of an Indigenous film at the IF Awards; and the confronting claim that “the Nazis only wanted a united Europe like the EU, anyway, in essence”.

Elsewhere the blog records Wolstencroft’s claim that “refugees lie consistently about their refugee status,” and his belief that Australia is “deliberately importing a new criminal under class. Like we haven’t done that already with much of the Lebanese community.”

Dohrn sent an additional email to the media in an (unsuccessful) attempt to derail the MUFF screening of L.A. Zombie, but his campaign appears to have had little impact on the festival.

“This was definitely the best MUFF, the best and biggest,” Wolstencroft told Arts Hub last week.

“We scaled it down a bit – normally we were about 45 sessions, and we scaled it down to about 25, which was great for some reason,” he said.

“We were better able to publicise and focus upon what we were doing. I think we’ve always been a little overly ambitious for our budget, and so we scaled it back … and were able to focus more on what are our core agenda, which is championing Australian genre films and independent cinema in this country, and it really paid off. It was fucking great, you know?”

When questioned about his political beliefs, Wolstencroft denied that he was, in Dohrn’s words, ‘a white supremacist and a Nazi apologist’.

“I guess I would be considered right wing, but I don’t think there’s anything more controversial about that than being a left wing revolutionary, or something like that,” he said.

“I am interested in right wing politics and I constantly discuss it, but I’m not a racist. I like to basically shake things up a little bit, though maybe not every comment I have made has been well thought out, such as flippant things I generally say on people’s Facebook pages.

“I am against I guess mass immigration continuing in Australia; I think it’s been successful to a point up until now, that’s an opinion that I hold, and I’m quite proud of it. I agree with Tony Abbott’s position on stopping the boats. I’m comfortable with all these things. I don’t think it’s that controversial.”

Does Wolstencroft consider his use of terms such as ‘Abo’ and ‘faggy’ to be controversial?

“I’ve got many gay friends. I can call them fags, I don’t think they have a problem with that. I have many Aboriginal friends who don’t mind if I use the term ‘Abo’,” he responded.

“I am somebody who likes to shake things up. Yes, I am a rabble-rouser, I’m not politically correct. I constantly use things like that. It doesn’t mean shit, I don’t think.”

AND THE WINNER IS

The following awards were presented at the closing night of MUFF XI:

OZBest Film presented by Canon: El Monstro Del Mar!

Runner Up Best Film: Bad Behaviour

Best Director: Joseph Sims (Bad Behaviour)

Best Male Actor: Lindsay Farris (Bad Behaviour)

Best Female Actor: Nelli Scarlet (El Monstro Del Mar! )

Best Supporting Male Actor: Roger Ward (Bad Behaviour)

Best Supporting Female Actor: Ellen Grimshaw (Bad Behaviour)

INTERNATIONAL

Best Foreign Film: The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

Best Foreign Director: Bruce LaBruce (LA Zombie)

Best Male Actor: Foreign Film - Morten Rada (Dark Souls)

Best Female Actor: Foreign Film - Ingrid Schram (Blondes in the Jungle)

OZ AND INTERNATIONAL

Special Jury Prize: Road Train

Best Guerrilla Film: Burlesque

Best Documentary: Lanfranchi’s Memorial Discotheque

Best Cinematography: Stuart Simpson (El Monstro Del Mar)

Best Screenplay: Joseph Sims (Bad Behaviour)

Best Short Film: Dark Horse & The Zimmer Gang

Runner Up Best Short Film: Carrot

Best Male Actor in a Short Film: Miles O’Neill (Carrot)

Best Female Actor in a Short Film: Alin Sumarwata (Dark Horse) & Vanessa De Largie (Crazy in the Night)

Best International Short: The Dandy Doctrine

Visit the Melbourne Underground Film Festival here.