Where the weird things are

A selection of unusual film festivals feature
found footage, hobos, underground
craziness and anarchist activism

HORRIFYING HUNKS: The Found Footage Festival

by MARK SLUTSKY

The summer blockbuster season, now officially upon us, always sees a winnowing of movie options as the big movies take up multiple screens and jostle the more marginal stuff out of the way. So fans of weird, offbeat and political cinema should rejoice as this week no less than four small but interesting film festivals roll into town.

The funniest of this week’s film events is likely The Found Footage Festival. Curator/hosts Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett are back (after a Just for Laughs appearance a few years ago) with a new version of this amusing show, a hilarious mish-mash of weirdo VHS offerings they’ve dug up that includes corporate training videos, workout tapes, weird religious stuff, homemade music videos, bizarro how-tos, public access madness and other found treasures. (My favourite this time around has to be the creepy montage of ’80s-era “hunks” like the small-time pro wrestlers “The Fabulous Ones.”) The show might seem a bit of an anachronism in the age of YouTube, but seeing this stuff with a big appreciative crowd is always more fun than watching it at home. Catch it at the Monument-National (1182 St-Laurent), this Saturday, May 16, 10 p.m., $15.

I’ve definitely never attended a Hobo Film Festival before, but we’ll all get the chance this Monday as Agency Films’ travelling event makes it to Montreal. This interesting-looking fest focuses on films about railroads, train-hopping and tramp culture. The main event is John T. Davis’s feature documentary Hobo, shown with about a dozen other short films about the subject. You can see it all at Friendship Cove (215A Murray) this Monday, May 18, 8 p.m., $6.

One of the city’s most festive fests, the Montreal Underground Film Festival, celebrates its fourth anniversary this week. Helmed by Montreal Roller Derby League members Zoë Brown and Karina Mariano MUFF takes a refreshingly handmade and punk rock attitude to the usually stuffy business of running a festival. There are DJs, like Plastik Patrik, a MUFF house band (Dani Demon & the Mufflers) and nightly themes like “Animal House” and “Sex & Suicide.”

Oh, and movies, of course. Interesting-looking stuff at MUFF includes Stupid Junkie Faggot, an alleged “blood-spattering campfest” by Drew Tobia, Dave Johnson’s photojournalist doc Eye-Witness War, Blue Skin, a German doc about a trio of tattooed nonagenarians and a bunch more. The MUFF runs from Thursday, May 14 through Saturday, May 16. Movies show at the Eastern Bloc (7240 Clark), Le Cagibi (5490 St-Laurent) and Friperie Potetr (6029 Parc), and cost $5 each; Thursday and Friday start at 8 p.m., Saturday at 7 p.m. For more detailed program info you can check out muff514.com.

Finally, the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair is getting in on the film fest fun themselves. This Friday, May 16 they’re running an all-day radical film fest with both French and English movies from at home and around the world. Films cover topics like AIDS, Lebanese refugees, Mexican and San Francisco squatters, homelessness and other activist-friendly stuff. Most are short docs, so you can duck in and out whenever you feel like it and you’re sure to catch something interesting. That’s at CEDA (2515 Delisle), from 10:30 a.m–5:45 p.m.