hybristo honeymooners at SUFF

we've been reviewed by melbourne film critics at screen machine for our screening at sydney underground film festival this past weekend. very honoured to be one of the three films to be featured for the day. thank you whitney, i was very nervous when i realised that we'd been reviewed & during the public Q & A i felt inarticulate and was almost falling off the stage from sleep deprivation having to immediately run off to finish another film to premiere the following night for our art exhibition [tomorrow's blog]. reviews are daunting at the best of times.

Hybristo Honeymooners (Victoria Waghorn, Australia)

Love is pain. Especially in hell.

Created in a mere 48 hours (with cast doubling as crew), Victoria Waghorn’s latest film Hybristo Honeymooners questions whether serial killers should be exempt from wedded bliss. Ultimately interrogating the idea of hybristophilia- being sexually aroused by people who have committed violent and/or gruesome crimes – the film opens in typical cliché wedding-film style with a shot of a car; its bumper declares ‘JUST MARRIED’. 

The twist: these newlyweds are psychopaths. The husband goes into a fit of ecstasy as he sniffs WD-40 before his murderous rampage. The wife, whose rapture is initially misread as fear, gets similar kicks out of being chained up as she waits for him. Their marriage is not consummated with sex as we might suspect, but with the violent murder of a ‘slant eyed’ woman. Through these variations on the idea of wedded bliss Waghorn’s film depicts a literal threat to normative heterosexual marriage.

The most arresting scene: A fairy winged bride masturbating to the sounds of her husband murdering their kidnapped victim. A sheep skull rests on her chest; its hollow eyes return the gaze of the audience. The woman climaxes, the film ends. This film is beautifully perverse.

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.

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