Now in our 14th year, BUFF returns to Harvard Square with plans to make this year’s program the best yet, but we need your support!

In the past, the festival has been able to survive on the generosity of our sponsors. In this down economy, cash sponsorship is scarce, and we need the funds for associated rental costs, printing and advertising, and accommodating our attending feature filmmakers.

The Boston Underground Film Festival has a fourteen year history of bringing under-appreciated cinema to an audience ravenous for a movie-going experience outside the mainstream. Over the years, BUFF has managed to host such guests as Bill Plympton, George Romero, Lloyd Kaufman, Frank Henenlotter, Lucky McKee, Angela Bettis, George Kuchar, and Mink Stole.

BUFF has also managed to give Boston audiences face-time with such visionary contemporary filmmakers as Jason Eisener, Douglas Buck, Simon Rumley, Zach Clark, Karim Hussain, Anna Biller, and Ann Marie Fleming. We want this year’s BUFF to continue with our tradition of bringing filmmakers face-to-face with an appreciative audience.

We are reaching out to our audience to help us out by buying a festival pass early through this Kickstarter campaign. Smaller donations are always welcome and will be rewarded with thank you’s and festival screening tickets. At the higher levels we are offering invites to exclusive donor events and our filmmaker reception at the festival. Please lend us your support today!

Thanks to our friends at The Whore Church for the pitch video!

Down a seedy city street, a young woman is obsessed with what appears to be a long abandoned theatre. One night, she sees the front door slightly ajar and impulsively decides to sneak inside.

But there in the vast, eerie auditorium, a show unlike any other unfolds before her eyes. Its host is an odd marionette-like man who will introduce her to six tales of the truly bizarre: A couple traveling in a remote part of the French Pyrenees crosses paths with a lustful witch; A paranoid lover faces the wrath of a partner who has been pushed to her limit; The Freudian dreams of an unfaithful husband blur the lines between fantasy and reality; The horrors of the real world are interpreted through the mind of a child; A woman addicted to other people’s memories gets her fix through the fluid of her victims’ eyeballs; And a perverse obsession with sweets turns sour for a couple in too deep. But as the stories unfold, something strange is happening to the woman. Something irreversible and horrific. Something that awaits its next audience in The Theatre Bizarre.

Directed by Douglas Buck (Sisters, Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America) , Buddy Giovinazzo (Combat Shock, Life is Hot in Cracktown), David Gregory (Plague Town), Karim Hussain (The Beautiful Beast, Subconscious Cruelty), Jeremy Kasten (The Wizard of Gore (2007)), Tom Savini (Tales from the Darkside, Night of the Living Dead), and Richard Stanley (Hardware, Dust Devil).

Producer and segment director David Gregory (“Sweets”) will be in attendance Saturday, Jan. 28th for an intro and Q&A. Executive producer Daryl Tucker will be on hand for the Saturday, Feb. 11th screening.

Co-presented by Emerson College, department of Visual and Media Arts and the Boston Underground Film Festival.

View the trailer:

The festival seeks the alternative, the confrontational, the political and the controversial. BUFF seeks films that celebrate alternative visions and sounds, offering a platform that encourages new ideas and work and pushes the envelope in style and content.

EARLY DEADLINE: 27 August 2011
REGULAR DEADLINE: 14 October 2011
LATE DEADLINE: 30 December 2011
EXTENDED DEADLINE: 13 January 2012

Friday September 30th
Coolidge Corner Theatre
11:59pm in glorious 16mm!

Buy tickets online! ($9.75)

In the underworld of the American Midwest two rival gangs, the Ravens and the Spiders, rule the streets. Goose, the leader of the Ravens, decides on one final drug deal before leaving the gang and settling down with his psychic girlfriend. His life crumbles around him, however, when his girlfriend is brutally clubbed to death by members of the rival gang. After burying her in a trash compactor, Goose hides out with his junkie psycho father and plots his revenge! His rampage culminates in a massive street brawl with Kung Fu, gory decapitations, vivid throat slashings, car stunts and bloody gunfights.

DEADBEAT AT DAWN will be preceded by a 5 minute preview of DIARY OF A DEADBEAT: THE STORY OF JIM VANBEBBER, over 2 years in the making and directed by BUFF alum Victor Bonacore (ICE CREAM SUNDAY, BUFF 2010).

Q&A with Jim VanBebber after the screening hosted by Doug Mesner & The Mesner Family. Also EVERY PERSON who purchases a ticket is AUTOMATICALLY ENTERED into a RAFFLE and the winners will be announced after the movie. The prizes include autographed 8X10’s of Jim and box sets of “Deadbeat at Dawn” and “The Manson Family,” which Jim wrote and directed as well. It’s an amazing box set of two amazing films! The winners will have the choice of one of the two prizes. The raffle is being hosted by BUFF alum Ruby LaRocca (“Belated by Valentine’s Lover” BUFF 2010), Joey Smack, & Monica Puller.

BUFF’s 2011 Opening Night Film, Hobo With a Shotgun, is back in Boston theaters again and we’re delighted to co-present our Audience Award-winning favorite with the Coolidge!

Join us for two awesome midnight screenings at the Coolidge Corner Theatre:
July 1 & 2
Shows start at 11:30pm

BUFF will be on-site to give out swag and prizes!

RSVP on Facebook and spread the word!

Synopsis:
A train pulls into the station – it’s the end of the line. A Hobo jumps from a freight car, hoping for a fresh start in a new city. Instead, he finds himself trapped in an urban hell.

This is a world where criminals rule the streets and Drake, the city’s crime boss, reigns supreme alongside his sadistic murderous sons, Slick & Ivan. Amidst the chaos, the Hobo comes across a pawn shop window displaying a second hand lawn mower. He dreams of making the city a beautiful place and starting a new life for himself. But as the brutality continues to rage around him, he notices a shotgun hanging above the lawn mower… Quickly, he realizes the only way to make a difference in this town is with that gun in his hand and two shells in its chamber.

Best of Fest Feature: Profane
Runner-Up: A Horrible Way to Die

Most Effectively Effectively Offensive: A Safe Distance Away
Runner-Up: Ninjas

Director’s Choice Short: Beating Hearts
Runner-Up: Good Morning Beautiful

Director’s Choice Feature: CHOP – The Movie
Runner-Up: The Beast Pageant

Audience Award: Hobo With a Shotgun

DIRECTOR TRENT HAAGA IN ATTENDANCE

Join us tonight for the North American premiere of CHOP! The first screening starts at 9:15pm at the Kendall Square Cinema.

CHOP is reminiscent of newer revenge cinema, like Park Chan Wook’s SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE and OLDBOY. Here, you have a fairly intricate series of bloody events put in place by someone wronged trying to make their victim pay for some secret transgression from earlier in their lives. Yet, a sense of humor remains prominent in the face of some genuinely unsettling brutality. The cast really pulls off this double-barreled tone. In particular, Billy Bakshi’s performance in the role of the condemned and amputated Lance Reed is as hilarious as it is horrifying. During the arc of the story, the roles of protagonist and antagonist are switched as potential motives are revealed, eventually enabling you to enjoy Lance’s suffering as much as the Stranger does.

Later tonight, join us for our KAIJU KARAOKE party at the Friendly Toast!

LUCKY MCKEE AND PRODUCER ANDREW VAN DEN HOUTEN IN ATTENDANCE!

Join us as we present this one-night-only screening of Lucky McKee’s The Woman tonight at 9:30 p.m. with McKee and producer Andrew van den Houten in attendance!

Horror auteur, Lucky McKee, brings us his latest study in human cruelty, The Woman, co-written with the legendary Jack Ketchum. Controversially received at Sundance, this is a film that will divide audiences along undiscerning lines. Touted by critics as needless torture-porn-du-jour, this is certainly not light fare. There is a lot of vicious, female-directed brutality depicted.

However, to write this film off as anything but a scathing, feminist, thought-provoking criticism of that which it portrays is entirely missing its point. This is no slasher’s romp in the woods. This is the exploration of no-frills monstrosity; a psychopathic man and the havoc he wreaks on both his imprisoned charge and his equally imprisoned family.

This show is likely to sell out so buy your tickets ahead of time!

Afterwards, check out Machete Maidens Unleashed: Psych Pop from the Far East with DJ Brother Cleve at Think Tank. This party in honor of the Filipino exploitation doc Machete Maidens Unleashed! (screening tonight at 7:30!) features exotic sleaze, tiki-inspired cocktails, and live visuals provided by The Whore Church.

The party starts at 10:00 p.m. and goes until they kick us out the door sloppy drunk at 2:00 in the morning. There’s a $10 cover at the door (which includes free food and a drink ticket!), but this great event, like all our parties, is absolutely free with your festival pass!

And be sure to check out the other amazing feature films and shorts playing tonight and through March 31 at the Kendall Square Cinema as part of BUFF 2011!

DIRECTOR JASON EISENER AND PRODUCER ROB COTTERILL IN ATTENDANCE!

“A Hiroshima of creative insanity. Every time you think the movie can’t become any more crazy, grotesque or disgusting, it takes out its penis and starts masturbating in public while raving about how cans of Progresso soup are running a shadow government.” –Matt Goldberg, Collider

Veteran actor Rutger Hauer gives the performance of a career as the Hobo, an honest homeless man trying to eke out an honest existence in ScumTown. Seeking to buy a lawnmower, he instead buys a shotgun, and takes on the crime boss Drake, and his two sons Slick and Ivan, awashing the streets in bloody red vengeance. What was once the SXSW/Grindhouse trailer sensation is now a feature length film starring Rutger freakin’ Hauer!

Peep the trailer and join us for this one-night-only engagement at the Kendall Square Cinema, Thursday March 24, at 7:00pm! Tickets are $10 and will likely sell out, so buy them in advance! The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director/producer team.

After the cinematic madness, join us at TT the Bear’s in Central Square for our opening night party!

Join us for a night of mayhem with a sci-fi/sexploitation twist!

Featuring Performances by:
Trabants (9:15)
Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band (10:15)
Math the Band (11:15)

Live VJ from WHORE CHURCH

Doors open at 8:30pm
18+

$10 in advance/$12 at the door
(Free for BUFF Passholders)
*BUFF Passholders OF AGE each receive 2 beer tickets!*

RSVP and buy your tickets!

Mr. Fessenden will be in attendance to accept his special award from Chlotrudis to celebrate his extensive and varied body of work. The show begins at 5 pm, and tickets are $20 ($15 for Chlotrudis and Brattle members), and can be purchased online at the Brattle’s website!

Tickets are $20 for the general public/$15 for Brattle/Chlotrudis members; the event begins at 5:00pm.