Thanks to everyone who braved the threat of this nonexistent nor’easter to join us last night for our festival opener. We’re still buzzing from the thrilling East Coast premiere of My Name is Myeisha featuring director Gus Krieger and powerhouse lead Rhaechyl Walker. We were reeling at the great turnout for Liquid Sky, and we’re sure Slava himself (though we’re disappointed he couldn’t make it due to a cancelled train from New York) would have been bowled over our enthusiastic audience, while the Death Waltz showcase at ZuZu brought analog thrills and chills to Central Square.
Tonight, we’re kicking off the festivities at 5:30pm with Touching From a Distance, our first shorts program of the festival. This collection of shorts, featuring films from South Africa, Lebanon, France, and the United States, explores themes of loneliness and human connection – something we can’t help but feel grows increasingly more relevant in our interconnected-yet-disconnected age of social media.
Equal parts gothic fairytale and coming of age drama, writer/director Deborah Haywood’s feature debut spins a pastel pink yarn about a princess and a hunchback and the heartrending cycle of intergenerational bullying that binds them. Marrying fairytale aesthetics with British realism, Pin Cushion combines the enchanting with the devastating in her deeply personal feature debut.Don’t let the whimsical production design fool you – Pin Cushion is as viscous as anything else you’ll see this year at BUFF.
Finally, we have the East Coast premiere of The Theta Girl, probably the closest we’ve got this year to the old school BUFF aesthetic. Exploding onto the screen with more poise, wit, and audacity than films with ten times its budget, The Theta Girl leans heavily into exploitation film tropes without coming off as another exercise in Grindhouse style. Billed as an “existenploitation film,” The Theta Girl has enough gore, nudity, laughs, punk rock, and metaphysical angst to satisfy your basest desires.
Speaking of basest desires, we haven’t forgotten to feed your hedonistic impulses this evening either. Join us from 10pm to 1am at Lord Hobo for DJ GLDLDR’s Pickled Beats Party. We’ll have free snacks and special beer deals provided by Lord Hobo with a playlist curated especially for BUFF by DJ GLDLDR. There’s a $5 cover and it’s free to BUFF passholders.
Can’t make it tonight? Don’t worry – we’re here all weekend long! Check out our schedule to see what else we’ll be unleashing in the coming days.