mother's milk

SUFF is just around the corner and this week they released the 2010 program & series of inimitable trailers. it's great to see a film festival run by wicked filmmakers who didn't just revert to the film festival genre because their films aren't good enough to stand alone in others.


stefan popescu & katherine berger have proven that they're brilliant filmmakers in their own right with a third experimental feature film currently in post-production. here's one of the new trailers featuring our punk monk propaganda project hybristo honeymooners made for the 48 hour international film project. since recut & given a quickie grade. written, designed, directed and co-produced by yours truly. my inspiration was the banjo duel off in deliverance & the eroticism of serial killing constrained by the timeframe, whilst fusing with my wonderful muse the heavenly cat davies whilst working within some classic signature items provided by the festival at the time:

48HR film project parameters for script to screen short films


1. genre - femme fatale
2. object - a torch
3. character - jemma gordon, a writer
4. line of dialogue - "one of these days you're going to realise i'm right"

this is the film i literally broke my back on [skydiving is sadly now permanently off the menu] and almost killed two of my friends/cast via hypothermia. an opiate onslaught really makes one somewhat insensitive to others' pain. 


we've managed to elicit a couple of awards for the film thus far. i'm very excited to be screening at this wonderful festival for the third year in a row. an incredible honour. sad not to have the beloved germans [felix & michael] here who were key to the production this SUFF season.



punk monk propaganda 48 hr team was


talent
catherine davies
mischa chaleyer-kynaston
dave cheng
ky-lee menzies


crew
andrew berman
mischa chaleyer-kynaston
dave cheng
ky-lee menzies
dermot mcguire
felix pflieger
michael prechtl
kate taylor
victoria waghorn


music
dan simmonds
the lurkers



hybristo honeymooners is part of the mother's milk [wonder women] program & despite playing opposite one of my favourite film directors [harmony korine's new feature trash humpers [which also plays the following day -- whew] i will be in the fusebox: "a[sic] outrageously diverse and imaginative session of films made by talented female directors. what woman wouldn't make a film about seductive monks or a serial killer wedding?


screening FRIDAY 10 SEPT 19:45 – 21:15
sydney underground film festival
thursday sep 09 - sunday sep 11, 2010
the factory theatre

D. ray white is my daddy

and i love my daddy, till the day i die...

white lightnin' is the shadowy filtered monochromatic biopic of dancing outlaw, jesco white. created by first time feature director dominic murphy, the film is as abruptly brutal as it is brilliant as it is beautiful.

the closing night film at this year's sydney underground film festival, it continued to enrapture a stoic audience as its implied violence had the strongest stomachs & eyes wincing whilst remaining hypnotically steadfast on the screen accompanied by the entrancing beat of the banjo & famed appalachian feet of the psycho hillbilly from lynchian hell.

with demons hot on his toe-tapping heels the fictional account of real life career criminal jesco white is probably not the tourist grabbing PR campaign west virginia will be producing anytime soon. the darkest elements & clichés of psycho white trash is pushed multiple stops within an exaggerated but bleakly sellable inch of itself. a real life horror story which makes stereotypical pulp cinema like wes craven's, the hills have eyes & hillbilly horror look like name-brand pussy fodder for spoilt kitty-litter dependent siamese whilst rewriting the hitchcock's psycho shower scene. refocus eyes. stay away from needles. moonshine bottles. and gas.

with similarly rose-colour stripped shades to harmony korine's [gummo, kids] harsh graphic riposte themes, there's a wonderful narrative curve which provides more than cheap shock value, especially considering visible screen violence is actually minimal, the implication is extreme. the story is delivered with sensitivity & panache.

edward hogg's rendition of the renegade protaganist is mesmerising. carrie fisher's supporting role as older lover cilla is odd but works well depicting both the ostrasization & variable realty perception of both polarized identities.

the religious epiphanies in this film are enough to either inspire martyrdom or life long atheism. with production design which elevated these moments to moments of visionary elevation, white lightnin' s end is as chilling & poetic in an iconographic fashion that it made me feel all angelina jolie. first i just need to work on my dance steps.

[thanks to the ever gracious interwebs for providing pix. i ♥ you]

and now for the real thang...

bleached beach painters

saturday avo. bondi beach. number 12.

three intrepid adventurers raen, claire & myself assailed dear friends; francois & marianne's over the weekend to transform their new 1940s pad from ugly duckling to beautiful swan with paintbrushes & chisels firmly in hand.

with the invaluable aid of julien, the saw wielding wonderboy & under the inimitable direction of the expectant overseer marianne: grill rendering was, um, resculpted, a ladder was beautifully painted rather than walls, a fab new brown paper bag hat trend was set, a bathroom ceiling was miraculously created, orange nectar from the gods/shop down the bottom of the road was quaffed & i somehow ended up looking like i'd been at a face painting carnivale...

time happily sucked us up into a vortex & we also managed to miss the premiere of another friend, ben ferris's feature film penelope at the sydney underground film festival but managed to [just] make it in time to see our own two films [chick addict & salome's picnic] play in the following session... before engaging in that err, stimulating ass-talking scene in pink flamingos.

we missed the midnight session of porn dogs [but love the website] after an epic three session run, but befriended greg blatman, the director & his lovely wife [who was almost a willing victim to an alien pink abduction]. congratulations on winning SUFF's "most taboo" award. greg won't be introduced to my furry felines anytime soon... fluffers they are not.

have dogtag, will SUFF [© @shoes_off]

thursday night. factory theatre. the third sydney underground film festival kicked off with the bang of a free bar & an incredible opening political prankster-saluting feature film [yes men fix the world] supported by tres cool industrial short pochsy & western spaghetti mash-up cattle call.

the pink flamingos & a handful of punk monks [including our new wonderful newly recruited german paparazzi] ran amok amongst the diverse crowd of subversive dogtagged filmmakers & lovers everywhere whilst the endless pizza & wine corks popped.

punk monk propaganda tribe have three short films playing which are the happy result of some collaborative KINO fun:

the sleeper [AUS] - kate taylor [sunday 18:30]

salome's picnic [GER] - victoria waghorn [saturday 18:30]

chick addict [AUS] - victoria waghorn [saturday 18:30]

come see us & support no-frills independent cinema. if not in the theatre we'll undoubtedly be at the bar pimping our wares & excitedly clutching our scratch 'n' sniff card for john waters' delightfully tasteless trangressive cult classic, pink flamingos which screens tonight at 20:30. eggs, eggs, EGGS!!!

[pix by punk monk felix pflieger]

SUFFER

the day started on a delicious beat today with the kind of email that is the stuff of wet dreams for indie filmmakers like myself.

apart from unsolicited funding/PR & the discovery of stomach-wrenching stories, what we like to find are messages from film festivals starting with the magic word "congratulations". today was one of those days.

to be fair i haven't actually been on the festival submission trail at all this year. it's lucky that some festivals that we were part of last year kept sending invitations/submission reminders...

it's been a transitionary time of massive upheaval/consolidation but still between us punk monks we have managed to produce a handful or two of short films in the last eight months, since i returned from promoting our KINO KABARET film when sally met frank on the international circuit which garnered some wonderful successes.

this year sydney underground film festival [SUFF] will be screening THREE punk monk propaganda films all spawned from the family fray with a closely knit connection to our friends the festivalists who run possible worlds canadian film festival & sydney KINO.

the punk monk tribe have been mostly underground in planning mode all year slowly working & developing arguably bigger & better projects so it's incredibly validating to receive the nod from a film festival which is gathering momentum in leaps & bounds for work designed for us to "keep our hand in". all these films were no budget, two were shot on NOKIA mobile phones & two were made in less than 48 hours from script to final mix.

and the nominees are:

chick addict: dir, victoria waghorn

the sleeper: dir, kate taylor

salome's picnic: dir: victoria waghorn

big thanks to these invaluable punk monks who were integral to the abovementioned projects & whose name is behind director lights but won't always be: dermot mcguire, stevie dunstan, alex parker, raen waghorn-hughes, clare devlin-mahoney & felix pflieger.

also our sometime collaborating punk monk who's entrenched back in the studio with us once more come monday has had two films selected. YAY!

telepoorchoice: dir, mischa chaleyer-kynaston

your friendly local butcher: dir, mischa chaleyer-kynaston

there would be more supporting images but today is fraught with tech issues & my mac [the image powerhouse] will not currently speak to the keyboard or mouse... lazyweb #FAIL