Sydney Underground Film Festival 2011

Overview

Underground is a flexible word. At the Sydney Underground Film Festival it can mean under the radar, shocking or simply strange. Put together originally as an antidote to the demise of alternative cinemas like the Valhalla, Third Eye or the Mandolin, it has a line-up which straddles a broad range of independent films that don't tend to get a showing elsewhere. This year the Festival returns with screenings at its Factory Theatre HQ, excursions to a Sydney College of the Arts after-party and a Mu Meson Archives festival warm-up.

Opening the festival are the low-budget super-heroics of Super by Troma refugee James Gunn. A Man Within will profile the writer and Kerouac-befriending William S Boroughs, while at Sydney College for the Arts, Jack Sargeant will curate post-festival day of local and American film at SUFF+Plus. This College excursion also bulges in the middle with a panel featuring writers from X,  the local low-budget, Kings Cross thriller that features as the festival's closing night film. Free Radicals presents a history of experimental filmmakers, including luminaries like Andy Warhol and Maya Deren, while doco Dragonslayer follows one boy's coming-of-age in US skateboard culture. Also up for grabs are sessions of shorts spotlighting women directors, sex & love, and animation.

As part of this year's Sydney Underground Film Festival Concrete Playground is proud to present the screenings of The Ballad Of Genesis And Lady Jaye and Trilogy.