Goodbye, Pink Flamingo: A Static Vision Film Festival

Overview

It's happening again: Static Vision, the independent screening collective that loves putting on annual film festivals at Pink Flamingo Cinema in Marrickville, is doing exactly that once more. Static Vision also adores showing movies that Sydney's other fests mightn't, possessing a distinctive curatorial mindset that it can't wait to splash across the silver screen. When it's in charge of the viewing, you're in for an experience that you won't find elsewhere.

In 2020, Hyperlinks was the Static Vision film festival to flock to. In 2021 came Dreamscapes, while 2022 gave rise to Metamorphoses. 2023's version is Goodbye, Pink Flamingo, because the collective is bidding farewell to its Sydney home, albeit hopefully only for now. On offer: a three-day single-screen program that focuses on queer, underground and punk countercultures — and that you can spend an entire weekend watching your way through from Friday, November 17–Sunday, November 19.

The lineup highlights start with the newly restored Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy, aka Gregg Araki's 1993 film Totally F***ed Up, 1995 effort The Doom Generation and 1997 release Nowhere — which means that you're in for queer teens finding a sense of family together, a road movie unlike anything else you've seen and a college-set black comedy. You'll also spot everyone from Rose McGowan (The Sound) and Parker Posey (Beau Is Afraid) to Ryan Phillippe (I Love That for You) and Christina Applegate (Dead to Me).

From there, Ken Russell's The Devils, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle and Tom Green's Freddy Got Fingered also sit on the supremely eclectic program, as do We Aim to Please, Shadow Panic and Vacant Possession from Sydney-based filmmaker Margot Nash.

On a bill that spans 14 features and four shorts — plus a surprise screening that you'll need to attend to find out what's showing — the fest's recent flicks include T Blockers, as well as Fox Maxy's shorts Blood Materials and Maat, and also Tulapop Saenjaroen's shorts Squish! and Notes from the Periphery.

Erotic cinema is also being thrust into the Goodbye, Pink Flamingo spotlight thanks to titles such as Ask Any Buddy, which has been spliced together from snippets of XXX gay cinema; a 4K restoration of Sextool; and The Exorcist-inspired queer horror Sex Demon.