Underground Film Festival to offer offbeat work all year
From comedies to blood and mayhem, ‘we’re pretty much all over the place’
Call them Calgary’s weird little cinematic orphans.
The selections for the Calgary Underground Film Festival’s Off the CUFF year-round programming are generally cult films that for one reason or another didn’t fit into CUFF’s main festival, which runs from April 22 to 29 this year, or its CUFF Docs festival, which ran from Nov. 28 to Dec. 2.
“There are always films that we get pretty excited about programming or that we see at other festivals or heard about and they just don’t fit timing-wise,” says CUFF director and co-founder Brenda Lieberman. “Yeah, I wish we could even go back in time and do more that we missed out on.”
So Off the CUFF will offer similar types of underground cinema throughout the year. For now, festival programmers are hoping to book two films a month.
For January, that means fans of offbeat cinema can catch the 2018 horror-thriller Lords of Chaos at the Globe Cinema on Jan. 11. The film, which stars Rory Culkin, tells the true-life tale of blood and mayhem surrounding the black metal scene in Oslo, Norway. CUFF programmers caught the film at Sundance this year.
The Jan. 21 screening of Destroyer is already sold out. That film stars a nearly unrecognizable Nicole Kidman as an LAPD detective haunted by undercover work she did years earlier.
Next month, Off the CUFF will feature Border on Feb. 5, a dark fantasy film from Sweden about a customs officer with strange powers who helps a police investigation. On Feb. 13, CUFF will offer a retrospective screening of a restored Mary Jane’s Not A Virgin Anymore preceded by the short I Was a Teenage Serial Killer. Both films were directed by the late Sarah Jacobson, a pioneer of female-centric guerrilla filmmaking who died in 2004 of cancer.
More titles will be announced as they are programmed.
Programmers for CUFF check out films from various festivals throughout the year, including the upcoming Sundance and Slamdance festivals in Utah, Fantastic Fest in Austin and Fantasia in Montreal, which deal with indie or genre films.
“It could be anything from an American quirky comedy to something like Border, which is a boundary-pushing, international, subtle genre film,” Lieberman says. “We’re pretty much all over the place, but I would say we look for things that are a little bit quirky or provocative and challenge the viewer in some ways.”
Visit calgaryundergroundfilm.org for showtimes.
We look for things that are a little bit quirky or provocative and challenge the viewer in some ways.