PREVIEW: 2020 SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL

COVID-19 forced organisers to abandon the physical event, but the 2020 Sydney Underground Film Festival forges ahead as an immense online program as only the typically defiant ‘SUFF’ team could muster. Another round of the Take48 filmmaking challenge, the academic forum Inhuman Screens and new films from Guy Maddin, Yorgos Lanthimos and Matt Dillon (pictured, below) suggests the 14th annual celebration of all things alternative won’t be dictated to by a global pandemic.

Structured as a three-tiered event, SUFF 2020 launches at 7.00pm AEST, Friday August 28th, with Take48, a 2-day filmmaking challenge that demands your production unit (maximum 10 people) must write, shoot, edit and submit your short by 7.00pm AEST, Sunday, August 30th. Just moments prior to the start time, this year’s theme will be announced and must be incorporated in the finished work. Prize packages from Sony Australia, Red Giant and RentACam are on offer.

Phase two will be the launch of the core film strands, which will be available via the festival website from September 10-20. The decision was made to forego feature-length content and focus on the traditionally popular short film strands that have been central to the festival experience since its earliest editions. ‘Love/Sick’ is a collective dozen short films that will engage the mind and fire up the loins (including Eve Dufaud’s urination celebration, Le Jet; pictured, right); the mind-altering impact of cinematic psychedelia is embraced in 10-strong strand, ‘LSD Factory (featuring the World Premiere of Wrik Mead’s pixelated sexual odyssey, Broken Relationship).

The short film roster continues with ‘Ozploit!’, twelve films from idiosyncratic, independent local directors, amongst them Michael Gosden, who will be holding the World Premiere of his bushland-set horror/comedy Stick; the contemporary social collections known as ‘Reality Bites 1 & 2’, the highlight being character actor Mark Metcalfe (Animal House; Seinfeld; Buffy the Vampire Slayer) reflecting on his life in Vera Brunner-Sung’s Character (pictured, left; Metcalfe with his director; and, horror goes underground in the sidebar ‘Sh!t Scared’, particularly notable this year for featuring Australian actress Caitlin Stasey in Parker Finn's Laura Hasn't Slept (pictured, below).

Some legitimate star power emerges in the line-up of 10 shorts called ‘WTF!’ Matt Dillon (The House That Jack Built; There’s Something About Mary) stars for three-time Oscar-nominee Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite; The Lobster) in the surreal subway story, Nimic. And Canadian cinema figurehead Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg; Twilight of the Ice Nymphs) co-directs the monochromatic fairground drama, Stump the Guesser. 

An adults-only animated strand called ‘Late Night Cartoons’, featuring such non-child friendly titles as Turd and Sweet Sweet Kink, and a celebration of Ukrainian short-film prowess called ‘Pickles, Bombs & Borsch’ (including ADG-nominee Stefan Bugryn’s second War Mothers film, Unbreakable) round out the vast online SUFF offerings.

Finally, the Inhuman Screens online conference will unfold over 8 hours on Friday 11th September, exploring themes and issues associated with ‘The Crisis of The Human and The Non-Human’. Attendees include author Lisa E. Bloom, a theorist in the fields of visual culture, film studies and feminist art history and Angela Ndailanis, a research professor in media and entertainment culture.

All details regarding the 2020 SYDNEY UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL, including streaming options and ticketing, can be found at the event’s Official Website.

REMEMBERING KELLY PRESTON: THE FILMS WE LOVE

"It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that my beautiful wife Kelly has lost her two-year battle with breast cancer," posted John Travolta, after his wife of 28 years, Kelly Preston, passed away on Sunday, aged 57. The mother of Ellie, 20, Ben, 9, and Jett, who passed away aged 16, kept the diagnosis and the details of her treatment private; her final hours were spent at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Los Angeles. Born Kelly Kamalelehua Smith on October 13, 1962, in Honolulu and having studied at University of Southern California, Preston would go on to captivate audiences with her natural charm, rare beauty and often underappreciated range on screen.

While she never attained A-list status, Kelly Preston was one of Hollywood’s most reliable and engaging ensemble players, invaluable to co-stars such as Robin Williams, Kevin Bacon, Ray Romano, Mike Myers, Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael Keaton and Eddie Murphy.  In honour of the late actress, we recall six of her performances that will forever remain etched in the mind of movie-goers. 

MISCHIEF (Dir: Mel Damski, with Doug Mckeown, Catherine Mary Stewart, Jami Gertz; 1985) Under the name ‘Kelly Palzis’, Preston guested on TV staples (Hawaii Five-O; Quincy M.E.; CHiPS) and earned her stripes in thankless movie roles (10 to Midnight, opposite Charles Bronson; the C-grade, 3D sci-fier Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn) before announcing herself to Hollywood in John Carpenter’s 1983 Stephen King adaptation, Christine. Her true worth was established in her follow-up film, the bawdy teen romp Mischief, in which she turned her lusted-after, dream-teen ‘Marilyn’ into a far more nuanced and complex character than Mel Damski’s film perhaps deserved (then did it again in her next film, the otherwise forgettable C. Thomas Howel vehicle, Secret Admirer).

SPACECAMP (Dir: Harry Winer, with Lea Thompson, Kate Capshaw, Leaf Phoenix; 1986) Unsalvageable as a commercial prospect coming in the wake of the Challenger disaster, the teen adventure SpaceCamp is remembered by a very specific group of 80s teenagers for the thrill it provided at some very base levels. Preston shone in an unusually strong cast, exhibiting great chemistry with co-stars Lea Thompson and Kate Capshaw, though some dire dialogue and the pall cast by NASA’s darkest hour stymied her leading lady status at just the wrong time in her career.

TWINS (Dir: Ivan Reitman, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito, Chloe Webb; 1988) There is no denying that a huge part of Kelly Preston’s acting legacy will be the lightning bolt of supporting-part energy she provided a slew of comedies - Only You (1992), with Andrew McCarthy; Nothing to Lose (1997), with Tim Robbins; Holy Man (1998), with Murphy and Jeff Goldblum; View from the Top (2003), with Paltrow. It all began with hard yards she put into bolstering Ivan Reitman’s Twins with an adorable performance that drew the ‘lovably funny’ out of ‘The Austrian Oak’ himself.

JERRY MAGUIRE (Dir: Cameron Crowe, with Tom Cruise, Renee Zellwegger, Cuba Gooding Jr.; 1993) Crowe, Cruise and Zellwegger got all the nominations, but the handful of scenes that Preston played as ‘Jerry’s ultra-ambitious, dangerously sexed-up fiancee ‘Avery Bishop’. She is the ‘romantic’ reflection of the cynical, heartless corporate culture that Jerry is fleeing; with no Avery, there'd be no Dorothy. Kelly Preston, as the ‘anti-Dorothy, is unforgettable. 

SKY HIGH (Dir: Mike Mitchell, with Kurt Russell, Michael Angarano, Danielle Panabaker; 100 mins) Kelly Preston always made being an actress look like capital-F Fun. Whether it was baring all in the camp horror pic Spellbinder (1988), goofing off in the period comedy Love at Stake (1987) or just positively glowing as Kevin Costner’s love interest in Sam raimi’s For the Love of the Game (1999), Preston looked like she was loving every minute of making movies. This is nowhere more apparent than in her spirited turn as ‘Josie Stronghold, aka Jetstream’ in Disney’s superhero romp, Sky High. Alongside Kurt Russell’s ‘The Commander’, Preston was the most perfect mom/wife/superhero archetype this side of Helen Parr/Elastigirl.    

GOTTI (Dir: Kevin Connelly, with John Travolta, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Stacy Keach; 2018) Her films with husband John are not considered Hollywood’s finest. The 2000 science-fiction epic Battlefield Earth is, in fact, considered one of Hollywood’s all-time worst. The film they met on, Dave Thomas’ 1989 cold-war comedy dud The Experts, has long since been forgotten (but was actually pretty funny). Their 2009 pairing, opposite Robin Williams in Walt Becker’s Old Dogs, was a tough watch. By the time they got together for Kevin Connelly’s pilloried 2018 hagiography of brutal crime boss John Gotti, it’s fair to say their collaboration offscreen had proven far more profound and ultimately immortal than their efforts in front of the camera.

REVFEST FINDS ITS GROOVE WITH COUCHED FIRST WAVE

In the wake of COVID-19, Australia’s most dedicated film festivals have kept the moviegoing dream alive via online screening events. Festivals both old (Sydney, Melbourne, St Kilda) and new (Gold Coast) have relied upon sympathetic filmmakers, tech gurus and strong bandwidth to keep curated schedules and, importantly, commercial interests in place. As audiences have grown to expect, Perth’s iconic Revelations International Film Festival is expanding upon the 2020 film festival experience with their own online event, ‘Couched’.

A first wave of 13 titles have been announced - seven dramatic narratives, six documentaries - that represent a cross-section of cutting-edge local and international filmmaking, with a total of 25 to be on offer come the launch date of July 9. “We exist to show films, and that’s something we will continue to do,” says Jack Sargeant, Program Director. “Most films will be available Australia wide for the duration of the fest and several will be made available internationally. This gives us an opportunity to showcase movies across the world, and give people a small taste of what we do.”

The line-up includes the Australian Premiere of Bidzina Kanchaveli’s trippy German sci-fier 1000 Kings, a digital journey into a beehive-like society where light is the ultimate currency; Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Ukrainian drama Atlantis, a despairing drama about a scarred returned serviceman and the idealist he clings to; the spectacularly bizarre VHYes, director Jack Henry Robbins’ VHS-shot dissection of family and memory, produced by his parents Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins; and, Bob Byington’s mumblecore masterpiece Frances Ferguson, starring the wonderful Kaley Wheless (pictured, right) as a disengaged small-town millennial for whom scandal barely registers.

The Australian sector will be repped by Robert Woods’ rural-set comedy/horror An Ideal Host, a WA-shot indie about a dinner-party that goes apocalyptically off the rails, that will have its World Premiere via Couched. Also set for its festival debut will be The Florist, a feature-length adaptation of director Andrew Ryan’s short starring Rebecca Murphy. Two docs round out the local content - the sexuality-positive account of middle-class suburbanite-turned-sex-worker Morgana, directed by Isabel Peppard and Josie Hess, and Shaun Katz’s musical meander down a very loud memory lane in Underground Inc, a chronicling of the ‘90s post-punk alternate-music scene.

Other documentaries to debut on the ‘RevFest Couch’ are Adam Kossoff’s speculative WWII thesis Through The Bloody Mists of Time; Iván Castell’s retro-music electro-odyssey Rise of the Synths, narrated by John Carpenter; the career retrospective, Forman vs Forman, in which co-directors Jakub Hejna and Helena Trestíková track the extraordinary life of director Milos Forman; and, Danish director Mads Brügger’s thrillingly convoluted murder mystery, Cold Case Hammarskjöld (pictured, right).   

Films will be available for rent for a 24 hour period through the fest, with titles available via the streaming service, Eventive. Patrons can buy single screening tickets, providing unlimited access to a film for 24 hours, or the more economical multi-film pass. With five years of the successful RevOnDemand streaming service behind him, Festival Director Richard Sowada has advantageous experience over the nation’s other festival heads, most of whom are new to the online space.

“We’ve been leading in that space for a fair while now,” says Sowada. “Fortunately that experience and reputation has allowed us to dive deeply into the contemporary international film scene and surface with a program of international features and documentaries presented on a platform that delivers a first class audience experience." That experience will resurface later in the year, with the real-world version of the Revelation Perth International Film Festival set to re-emerge, although the revised dates have not been confirmed.

Read the SCREEN-SPACE review of VHYes here.

Read the SCREEN-SPACE review of Morgana here.

DISNEY PLUS HONOURS STAR WARS ARTISTRY FROM MAY THE FOURTH

Streaming video-on-demand provider Disney Plus will honour the legacy of founder George Lucas’ Star Wars universe from May 4th with a series of conceptual art banners on their dedicated page sites.

Last Friday, the home page carousel art was updated for the first time since the VOD giant launched in November. The iconic ‘droids in the desert’ image, one of several visions crafted in 1975 by the late, great illustrator Ralph Macquarrie, topped the welcome screen. From May 4th, aka ‘Star Wars Day’, the collection will expand to include works from Jason Palmer, Doug Chiang and Seth Engström, along with several others who have contributed to the design aesthetic of the blockbuster series over five decades.

The special artwork will be available for all titles in the core ‘Skywalker Saga’, including A New Hope (1977); The Empire Strikes Back (1980); Return of the Jedi (1983); The Phantom Menace (1999); Attack of the Clones (2002); Revenge of the Sith (2005); The Force Awakens (2015); and The Last Jedi (2017). The ambitious undertaking will also coincide with the streaming platform’s fast-tracked May 4 launch of Rian Johnson’s The Rise of Skywalker (2019).

Concept art headers have also been prepared for the spin-off features, Rogue One (2016) and Solo (2018) and the animated stories, Star Wars: Rebels and Star Wars: Resistance. Disney Plus’ original Star Wars series, The Mandalorian, will get a concept art makeover as well as its own eight-part docuseries, Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian. Overseen by director/producer Jon Favreau, who will host round-table talks with key contributors, the series will reveal never-before-seen footage and insider production stories.

The ‘Star Wars Day’ Concept Art promotion is likely to further boost subscriber numbers for Disney Plus, which has seen a three-fold increase in sign-ups over the course of the global Coronavirus lockdown. The corporation’s international subscriber level is close to 65 million users as of the provider’s latest release, including an astonishing 8 million new accounts in India over the course of 24 hours (linked to its broadcast deal with local platform Hotstar).

DO WE NEED TO DISCUSS JOYSTICKS IN 2020?

The year is 1983, and the crest of the ‘teen sex comedy’ wave towers over Hollywood. A confluence of factors created the ‘perfect storm’ for the genre - Porky’s, a likably smutty, ‘50s-set B-movie about a bunch of bros trying to get their dweeby friend laid, had been a sleeper hit in 1981; the influence (and hormones) of the teenage demographic dominated the box-office like never before; and, the booming VHS revolution meant that video recorders all over the world needed sellable content that was fast to produce.

It was from within this cauldron of coincidence that Joysticks emerged; an otherwise unremarkable film that can now be held aloft as a prime example of the low-IQ, high-energy, T&A-obsessed ‘80s teen romp. Directed by actor-turned-director Greydon Clark, a gentleman who ably helmed such romps as Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977) and Wacko (1982), Joysticks is soft-headed exploitation cinema very much of its time.

Clark and his three(!) scriptwriters tap the video game mania of the day, setting their loose narrative in ‘Jeff’s’, an oddly-cubic arcade parlour. Nerdy nebbish Eugene (Leif Green) is on his way to his first day of his arcade career when two sorority pledges, Lola (Kym Malin) and Alva (Kim G. Michel), coax him into their convertible with a nipple flash and the promise of a public threesome. What they really want is a humiliating photo of him, then it’s off to the parlour, where the girls can up the ante for some real self-serving flirting while Eugene dodges cool kids in search of his pants. (Above, from left: Scott McGinnis, Leif Green, Jim Greenleaf)

Clearly, everything about this opening scene is untenable to 2020 sensibilities; perhaps, aside from the teen males in line on opening weekend (Joysticks would earn a not-insignificant US$4million domestically), it was also untenable to 1983 sensibilities. But it was the kind of set-up that routinely kicked-off films with such titles as Screwballs (1983), Spring Break (1983), Hot Moves (1984), Hot Dog: The Movie (1984), Loose Screws (1985) and Fraternity Vacation (1985). 

Clark largely abandons Eugene’s plight, focussing alternatively on arcade owner/hunky stud Jeff (Scott McGinnis), fat slob McDorfus (Jim Greenleaf), and a leather-clad punk/nerd hybrid called King Vidiot (Jim Gries). The plot takes some kind of shape when conservative blowhard Joe Rutter (Joe Don Baker, repping the old establishment just as John Vernon did in Animal House and Ted Knight did in Caddyshack) threatens to close down ‘Jeff’s’, abetted by his dumb goons, Arnie (the great John Diehl) and Max (John Volstad) and much to the bemusement of his free-spirited daughter, Patsy (Corinne Bohrer, stealing all her scenes) . (Pictured, above: from left, Volstad, Baker and Diehl)

Which all sounds likably goofy and instantly dismissable, which it is. When not pandering to its pervy base, Joysticks offers some fun slapstick and the odd zinger in its dialogue. But there are signposts along the way that won’t sit well with 2020 viewers, whether it is the enlightened teens of today or the aged teens of 1983 (i.e., me). Revisiting Joysticks a whopping 37 years* after its release is to reconsider the worth of the 1980s teen sex comedies in their entirety. 

In arguably the film’s most distasteful moment, McDorfus forcibly encourages Eugene to lose his virginity to a dozing Mrs Rutter (Morgan Lofting), the middle-aged woman heavily sedated on sleeping pills. She stirs and, while still drowsy, believes it to be her husband initiating a bout of rare marital bliss. The heinous implication is that she is responding positively to Eugene’s awkward and accidental groping. The ‘randy dowager’ trope was a popular one back in the ‘80s (see the aforementioned Caddyshack).

Another entirely unnecessary sequence involves Lola and Alva playing Pac-Man...topless. Gratuitous nudity was a teen sex comedy staple, of course, but rarely was it so devoid of context or absence of reasoning. Unsurprisingly, Kym Malin, aka ‘Nola’, had been the May 1982 Playboy Playmate of the Month - the casting of nude models (see Lillian Müller, Shannon Tweed, Teri Weigel) a ploy used to ensure some degree of celebrity and a willingness to disrobe were addressed in the casting. (Trivia: Malin was later cast as one of the Nakatomi Plaza hostages in Die Hard). (Pictured, above: Jonathan Gries as King Vidiot, with Baker)

So, finally, does Joysticks and its ilk have any worth at all twenty years into the new millenium? Are they snapshots that provide insight into the teens of the time and the adults of today? Or lurid, sordid examples of artless exploitation, best condemned to time-capsule history? Are they any more than crassly commercial relics, conjuring sickening images of producers slavering over ambitious starlets being coerced into disrobing? Or, are they a legitimately expressive ‘artform’ that understood and spoke to an audience cross-section, eager for validation?

Teen sex comedies ran the gamut at the height of their popularity, and most have been reassessed with a new understanding of what is acceptable on-screen in the name of laughs. That reassessment works both ways; Paul Brickman’s Risky Business (1983) is a teen sex comedy now considered one the decade’s best films. Of course, giggly, smutty hijinks like those in Joysticks, once considered harmless, are now frowned upon, although it would be wrong, even pointless, to flay it at the altar of moralistic hindsight. (Pictured, above: Corinne Bohrer, as Patsy)

Instead, they should be seen as movie history artefacts, from a time when films began to give voice and vision to how teenagers interpret sexuality. Sometimes, that was (and still is) ugly and childish and offensive. But it wasn’t generally mean. Even in films like Joysticks, films in which the ‘Mrs Rutters’ have to endure the inexcusable, the message is ultimately a moral one - friendships are tight, common bonds form and grotesque old capitalists are defeated. That has relevance in 2020, when striving to understanding the truths that lie beneath so much ugliness is more important than ever.

* Regarding the passage of time and society’s shifting moral compass - films that came 37 years before Greydon Clark’s Joysticks include Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, John Ford’s My Darling Clementine and, ahem, Disney’s Song of the South.

Read Greydon Clark's autobiography ON THE CHEAP: MY LIFE IN LOW BUDGET FILMMAKING, available from his official website.