1. BUFF 2010 Bacchus Awards

    This year we presented our Bacchus Awards to five highly deserving films at the Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge. Four awards were chosen by the festival jury, while the remaining “Director’s Choice” award was given by the co-directors of the festival to the film we thought best exemplified the underground spirit that is still very much alive! The official jury this year included Zach Clark, James Nadeau, Kathryn Ramey, and Stéphanie Trépanier.

    Best of Fest – Narrative
    Red White & Blue (Simon Rumley)

    Best of Fest – Documentary
    It Came From Kuchar (Jennifer Kroot)

    Best of Fest – Short
    Happily Ever After (Jamie Heinrich)

    Most Effectively Offensive
    The Life and Death of a Porno Gang (Mladen Djordjevic)

    Director’s Choice
    Someone’s Knocking at the Door (Chad Ferrin)

    Thanks to everyone who came out to make our festival a success! We love you all!

    March 31, 2010 • No Comments

  2. BUFF 2010: Saturday, March 27

    BUFF keeps on rolling along on into Day 3 of our little festival. Today we bring you a schedule packed with goodness. Check out the world premiere of Love on the Rocks, written and directed by local filmmaker Justin Edwards. We also have the East Coast premiere of Simon Rumley’s Red White & Blue, a recent hit at SXSW this month.

    Oh, and for you real freaks out there, DO NOT MISS our midnight tenth anniversary screening of Karim Hussain’s disturbing avant-horror Subconscious Cruelty. Rarely screened in the United States (and never before in the great state of Massachusetts), we have the single remaining 35mm print in existence ready to spring upon you, our unsuspecting audience. Nothing will prepare you for this!

    STUCK! » 7:30P » KENDALL SQUARE CINEMA

    LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: MINK STOLE » 10:00P » THE FRIENDLY TOAST

    This doubleheader is a doozy! First, come check out the New England premiere of Steve Balderson’s Stuck!, a wild homage on 1950s women-in-prison movies, featuring legendary dames Karen Black, Susan Traylor, Jane Wiedlin, Pleasant Gehman, and Mink Stole.

    Afterwards, we’ll pay our own sort of homage to Mink Stole, one of John Waters’ feisty muses, by making her the recipient of our first-ever Lifetime Underground Achievement Award. We will gather at the funky-retro Friendly Toast to the dark rhythms of DJ Chris Ewen to worship this legendary actress. It will be a dirty shame if you miss this special event!

    March 27, 2010 • No Comments

  3. BUFF 2010: Friday, March 26

    BUFF 2010 kicks into full gear today after the exhilarating opening night celebrations last night. Thanks to everyone that came out and made it such a tremendous success! We have so many amazing films that we can only highlight a few here, but check out our full schedule for a complete breakdown of the day’s events.

    There are some real gems for you today, including a screening of the grindhouse classic Pieces (ostensibly set in Boston, but really filmed in Valencia, Spain). We’ve also got a documentary about the history of exploitation films—a great primer if you’re new to the world of underground cinema—and two great midnight screenings, including the North American premiere of the truly fucked-up Serbian film, The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, to which only viewers 18 and older will be admitted for reasons that will become abundantly clear if you are brave enough to check it out.

    IT CAME FROM KUCHAR » 7:45P » KENDALL SQUARE CINEMA

    KUCHARFEST! » 10:00P » TOMMY DOYLE’S IRISH PUB & RESTAURANT

    Twin brothers George and Mike Kuchar have blurred the lines between trash cinema and art cinema for decades, producing zany, colorful, debauched epics that have won equal respect from the psychotronic freaks and the avant-garde community, while (unsurprisingly) remaining largely ignored by the rest of the world.

    Here at BUFF we like to celebrate the brilliant marginalized artists of the silver screen, and with that in mind we bring you the Boston premiere of It Came From Kuchar, with director Jennifer Kroot and George Kuchar in attendance!

    Join us after the film for Kucharfest, a raucous, bourbon-fueled celebration of the visionary underground filmmaker at Tommy Doyle’s Irish Pub & Restaurant. We’ll be screening clips from Kuchar klassics while DJ Brother Cleve spins some sleazy grooves to set the mood.

    March 26, 2010 • No Comments

  4. BUFF 2010: Opening Night!

    Love Exposure » 7:00P » Kendall Square Cinema

    “Love Exposure is one of those movies that defy description in every way. Stylistically, it’s all over the map, hitting on super-slick Scorsesesque montages and Restoration-era sexual comedy with equal grace. Somehow, it manages to be humorous, troubling and downright human all the while. Go ahead, try to leave halfway through. We dare you.” — Weekly Dig

    BUFF kicks off tonight with the New England premiere of Sion Sono’s Love Exposure. From the twisted mind that brought you Exte: Hair Extensions, Strange Circus, and Suicide Club comes this epic-length, sprawling masterpiece that can only be described as mind-meltingly brilliant, should you even try to describe it at all.

    Indeed, Love Exposure touches on so many different topics and veers in so many different directions that it’s difficult to know where to begin any explanation of it. At its core, it’s a film about… well, love, and all the potential roadblocks that society can throw in its way. Oh, and did we mention it’s also a four-hour epic about upskirt phototography and the Catholic Church?

    Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys

    Tokyo Steampunk » 9:00P » T.T. The Bear’s Place

    Join us at T.T. the Bear’s Place in Central Square for our epic Tokyo Steampunk opening night celebration. Local bands HUMANWINE, Walter Sicker and the Army of Broken Toys, Jaggery, and OwlWatcher will perform against a scintillating, theme-appropriate video collage backdrop. Janaka Stucky (a.k.a. J. Cannibal!) will be DJ-ing between bands to set the mood. This party is likely to sell out, so arrive early!

    Check out our full schedule for more info on the other amazing events going on this week!

    March 25, 2010 • No Comments

  5. Don’t Miss BUFF 2010!

    BUFF 2010 kicks off this week! The twelfth annual Boston Underground Film Festival runs March 25 through April 1 at the Kendall Square Cinema. Check out our full schedule, including four nights of awesome parties. Step right up and bear witness to this bizarre and insane sideshow of sight and sound sure to delight even the most twisted and perverse of tastes. You don’t want to miss out on this year’s festival!

    Buy your festival passes and tickets now!

    March 22, 2010 • No Comments

  6. Graphic Sexual Horror

    Wednesday, March 17, 2010
    9:30 p.m., $10 (tickets)
    Brattle Theatre
    40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA

    CineMental presents
    Graphic Sexual Horror (Anna Lorentzon and Barbara Bell, 2009)

    Insex.com, the brainchild of ex-Carnegie Mellon professor and artist, Brent Scott, began broadcasting torture imagery in 1997, long before the recent upsurge in mainstream depictions of so-called “torture-porn.” In 2005, as the Bush administration increased its own market share in real torture, the government used the Patriot Act to block Insex.com’s ability to process credit cards, thus forcing Insex to close its doors. Graphic Sexual Horror chronicles the rise and fall of this subculture phenomenon, wowing crowds at Slamdance, Hot Docs, and Fantasia International Film Festival in 2009. The documentary becomes an inquiry into consent and government intervention, asking hard questions about the role of money and personal responsibility.

    There will be a Q&A with Model 914 following the screening.

    This event is co-presented by Truth Serum with the Boston Underground Film Festival.

    March 11, 2010 • (2) Comments

  7. BUFF Launch Party

    Tuesday, March 9, 2010
    6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
    Stuart Street Playhouse
    200 Stuart Street, Boston, MA

    Come join us on March 9 as we kick off the BUFF festival season in style with our friends at the Stuart Street Playhouse! We begin the countdown to our underground cinema extravaganza in the newly converted cinema space in downtown Boston.

    6:00 p.m. » Enjoy free burritos & Harpoon beer in the theatre lobby.
    7:00 p.m. » A 45-minute sneak preview screening of shorts and trailers.

    The theatre capacity is 400, so bring your friends! They’ll thank you for it! As usual, there will be giveaways: t-shirts, tote bags, DVDs, sex toys, and any other assorted goodies we have lying around in the BUFF prize closet.

    One lucky duck will get a pair of all-access passes to BUFF 2010 (a $200 value), granting you admission to all parties and screenings during the eight-day fest!

    We will be screening trailers from ten of our most amazing features and showing a handful of shorts that are sure to short circuit your beer-soaked brain!

    RSVP on Facebook!

    March 1, 2010 • No Comments