MUFF IS AN Acronym FOR A FILM FESTIVAL- DOODLE IS NOT

Words: Dylan Delaney Ellis

If your not into the highbrow, art house content of MIFF (Melbourne International Film Festival) then you might be more inclined get down with MUFF (Melbourne Underground Film Festival). I’d excuse the obvious innuendo but I doubt the festival director Richard Wolsencroft or his demographic would be offended.

‘Melbourne Underground Film Festival eleven years of supporting independent genre film making in Australia. It’s aggressive, transgressive, cutting edge, hip oh and fucking out there, baby’
- Richard Wollstonecraft (Festival Director)

SPOOK caught the dynamic and extroverted curator just before the premiere of the opening night film EL MONSTRO DEL MAR, a blood orgy of violent femmes, sea monsters and schlock on schlock.

MUFF is a celebration of everything from blood, guts, gore, horror to science fiction and postmodern drama. Wolstencroft’s reasoning behind the festival he states simply ‘The Australian film industry has been dead boring for way too long, with this dull politically correct ABC Saturday afternoon bullshit and that’s not what we’re about.’

This year the MUFF is bringing us the first ever retrospective of the film adaptations of author Brett Easton Ellis’ works. American Psycho, Less Than Zero, Rules of Attraction and Australian director Gregor Jordan’s recent envisioning of The Informers, an Australian cinematic premiere.

What is probably the most radical film on the program this year though is a protest screening of Bruce Labruce’s L.A. Zombie that looks at the predatory nature of gay sex but is better described as ’Day of the Dead on Ice’. The film was officially banned by the Office of Film and Literature Classification and was removed from the MIFF program as a result, a reaction Wolstencroft describes as ‘ball-less‘. As this is an illegal screening and could potentially end in the same way as Margaret Pomeranz’s 2002 screening of Larry Clark’s Ken Park with police intervention and numerous arrests.

That doesn’t seem to phase Wolstencroft who boldly states, though there doesn’t seem to be much he doesn’t do boldly, ‘If they come and stop us, that’ll just make them look like a bunch of doodles’. Due to the contentious nature the location will be kept secret and only revealed to those who join the MUFF face book group.

In a nutshell if you head out to get some MUFF you’ll be supporting one of the only film festivals in Australia not receiving government funding and supporting a vital voice in Australian Cinema, even if it is a bit of a perverse.