Still getting away with it

The Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF) was established in 2000 by filmmaker and provocateur Richard Wolstencroft in a fit of pique, after his third feature, Pearls Before Swine (a philosophical reflection on the nature of sex, violence, politics and sadomasochism) was rejected by the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), then under the direction of Sandra Sdraulig.

Despite its reactionary origins, MUFF has thrived, and this year celebrates its 11th birthday with a series of screenings covering everything from the latest home-grown horror movies – including the opening night film, El Monstro Del Mar, about a bloodthirsty sea monster in Port Phillip Bay – through to a retrospective screening of films based on the works of author Bret Easton Ellis.

With an annual program that celebrates and champions genre and exploitation cinema, the films screened at MUFF are certainly not to everyone’s taste – Michelle Griffin of The Age once pithily described its program content as being “as much undergrad as underground” – but the vigour of the festival’s programming cannot be denied. And despite, or perhaps even because of Richard Wolstencroft’s occasionally ham-fisted publicity stunts – such as his 2003 plan to screen a film by notorious Holocaust denier David Irving – MUFF continues to attract a healthy audience each year.

But while the festival itself has thrived, the landscape in which it plays has changed significantly since 2000. Genre films, once shunned by Australian film festivals and funding bodies, have had a new renaissance, with titles such as Wolf Creek (2005), Black Water (2007), Lake Mungo (2008) and Mark Hartley’s Ozploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood (2008) garnering both critical and popular acclaim; and festivals such as MIFF and the Sydney Film Festival have embraced genre films, making them a key part of their respective programs.

With his usual brio, Wolstencroft cheekily claims to be partially responsible for this trend.

“There’s a whole group of us, but I think I have been championing this for what, eleven years, eleven festivals. Before that I’d been championing genre films as well with filmmakers like Mark Savage, Jon Hewitt and people like this, going right back to the first feature I made when I was 21, back in 1990, Bloodlust, where we wanted to continue the Ozploitation years; and basically at the time people looked at us like we were insane,” Wolstencroft tells Arts Hub.

“The main funding decisions of the last 20 years have always been set towards these politically correct, dull, kitchen-sink drama, social issue kind of films, but I think of late the funding bodies are beginning to realise that they can still make a few of those, but they can also start making more genre films, more transgressive and interesting pieces that can travel overseas, do well in festivals; and that’s been one of the main messages of MUFF.”

One of the most successful films MUFF has screened in recent years was Andrew Traucki and David Nerlich’s highly effective low budget thriller Black Water, about three young holiday makers who are trapped and terrorised in a mangrove swamp by an implacable saltwater crocodile.

“We were the only festival in Australia to play Black Water, and the first festival to champion Andrew Traucki, who’s now making a new film, The Reef, about a killer shark. But no-one was interested in that film here, and after MUFF played it I went to Thailand, I went to America and various places, and everywhere I went it was out on DVD. The film was made for under a million and was sold for a couple of million; it was in profit already and it hadn’t even been released here! It’s out here now, and it just shows that genre films have a market, if they’re well done – and we make great little genre films,” Wolstencroft enthuses.

One filmmaker who will be hoping to replicate the success of Black Water is 2005 AFTERS graduate Dean Francis, whose debut feature, Roads Kill, is showing at MUFF XI.

Described as ‘a gripping supernatural thriller in the tradition of Duel’, Francis’ film follows the horrifying misadventures of several backpackers forced into conflict with an ominous ‘road train’ in the Australian outback.

“There’s a huge tradition of these sorts of road movie horror films,” Francis says, “and that was the first thing Michael Robertson, the producer, told me when he called me up, that he had this film and it was inspired by Spielberg’s Duel; and given that Duel is one of my favourite films in that genre I was very excited. And in terms of Australian films, Road Games was a big influence … In many ways the film is kind of a return to that kind of crazy silliness of those Ozploitation times.”

Although he was brought onto the film fairly late in the process as a ‘gun for hire’, Francis was deeply involved in the casting process, and was able to infuse the film with his own sensibility, honed on a number of short films, the first of which he made in 2000, the same year MUFF was founded.

“While we were casting Road Train I remember seeing Mark Hartley’s Ozploitation documentary Not Quite Hollywood, and I remember thinking ‘Right, we’re getting right back to that crazy, low-budget, slightly trashy sort of genre filmmaking, which is so much fun,” Francis laughs.

“As far as the material went it presented a lot of stylistic opportunities to explore stuff in the world of David Lynch, the unknowing. And the thing about Road Train is that you’re never quite sure exactly what the source of the terror is. There’s a lot of possibilities, there’s ambiguity, and the tone and style come into play very heavily in terms of the audience grasping what the hell is going on; they kind of feel it rather than actually know, in a sense.”

Already released in the USA under the imprimatur of Fangoria magazine, Road Train is sure to provide genre fans at MUFF with a wildly enjoyable ride.

Other highlights of this year’s MUFF include six sessions of short films, Mini MUFF; the closing night film Bad Behaviour, starring John Jarratt; and a very special – and illegal – screening of Bruce La Bruce’s latest work of transgressive cinema, L.A. Zombie, which was dropped by the Melbourne International Film Festival this year after being banned by the Australian censors.

“We’re extending the festival by a day to do this Bruce La Bruce screening,” Wolstencroft says. “I have a venue organised and the owner is prepared to go to the wall for this film, so we’re really going to try and play it. And if not I have something else that we can legally play on standby, which is equally impressive. But I’m hoping we can get away with it.”

The 11th Melbourne Underground Film Festival, 20 – 28 August, 2010.

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