Cult and underground film festival Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF) returns this September, continuing its tradition of celebrating bold, boundary-pushing independent cinema.
SUFF was established in 2007. It has since become a cornerstone of Sydney’s cultural scene, and the 2024 programme features a diverse line-up of feature films, documentaries and shorts challenging the status quo and exploring the fringes of cinematic expression.
“At SUFF, we’re all about celebrating the wild, the weird, and the wonderfully unexpected,” Festival Director Nathan Senn says. “This year’s festival will take you on a journey through cinema’s most daring corners —where anything can happen and usually does. Our line-up of films is a testament to the fearless creativity of filmmakers who dare to challenge, provoke, and entertain, and we can’t wait for our audience to join us for the ride.”
Opening things up this year is the 50th anniversary of ‘Female Trouble’ (1974). It’s John Waters’ anarchic twist on Hollywood melodrama, starring Divine as Dawn Davenport. It embraces the lurid mantra ‘crime is beauty’. For an even more immersive experience, attendees can check out scratch n’ sniff cards, which release specific scents at key moments in the film.
Then, as things come to an end, ‘Scala!!!’ (2023) will be the Closing Night film. It’s a wildly entertainment documentary from Ali Catterall and Jane Giles, telling the riotous inside story of the infamous sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll cinema.
'The Organist'
Between the bookends you’ll find twisted black comedians like the Australian premiere of ‘Mother Father Sister Brother Frank’ (2024), depicting a suburban family’s murderous plot, and Andy Burkitt’s Melbourne-shot indie directorial debut ‘The Organist’ (2024).
Lovers of real-life stories will be satisfied via documentaries exploring resilience and defiance, including ‘Michel Gondry: Do It Yourself’ (2023), highlighting the filmmaker’s inventing DIY approach; Brandon Spivey’s ‘Crass: The Sound Of Free Speech’ (2023), chronicling the punk band’s fight for artistic freedom; and Jason Summers’ ‘I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago’ (2024), profiling Stu Spasm from Lubricated Goat.
‘The Lies We Tell Ourselves’ explores self-deception and quests for truth, while Quentin Dupieux’s ’Daaaaaali!’ delves into the life of Salvador Dali, and ‘The Hyperboreans’ investigates the legends and historical tales shaping our cultural narratives.
Musical comedy and pseudo-autobiography ‘Can’t Stop The Music’ from Nancy Walker follows the rise of the Village People, as they navigate the music industry and the challenges of fame.
SUFF will host the New South Wales premiere of Bruce LaBruce’s ‘The Visitor’, a brilliantly depraved, queer, subversive romp set in contemporary London and paying homage to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ‘Teorema’.
'Mother Father Sister Brother Frank'
Award-winning Italian director Mitzi Peirone’s horror-thriller adaptation of Don Roff’s ‘Saint Clare’ starring Bella Thorn takes audiences to a small town, where a woman is being haunted by voices and her past.
There are a few Australian premieres taking place at this year’s festival too – including ‘Sacramento’ starring Kristen Stewart, Michael Cera and Maya Erskine, and ‘RATS!’ by Karl Fry and Maxwell Nalevansky.
Fans of conversations can attend retrospective Q&A sessions exploring the careers of George and Charis Schwartz – pioneers of erotic filmmaking in the 1970s – with Charis in attendance; and artist/filmmaker Jill Westwood from industrial noise-performance phenomenon Fistf… (1981-4), one of very few women-led groups of the era, who challenged codes of male domination.
Shorts get a look in too of course – with an offering not for the faint-of-heart in WTF!, expressions of sexuality in LOVE/SICK, shorts from the vanguard renegades of Australian independent cinema in HOMEBAKED SHORTS, eye-opening, bite-sized documentaries in STRANGER THAN FICTION, and the return of the TAKE48 Film Challenge.
Check out the full programme.
The 2024 Sydney Underground Film Festival is on from 12-15 September.
