The Circuit

The latest from the festival scene this week.  A link exchange by indieWIRE and Variety.com.

DISPATCH FROM DALLAS
Sprawling Young Texas Fest Offers Noteworthy New Films: "The Last Lullaby," "Frag"

DISPATCH FROM BERMUDA
Spirit of Discovery Carries Island Fest

EVOLUTION OF THE UNDERGROUND
Changes at NYUFF, CUFF, BUFF...


More at indieWIRE.

Ed Halter, former director of the New York Underground, remembers the fest in the Village Voice:

This week, the New York Underground Film Festival is holding its 15th—and final—edition. I ran the event for 10 of those years, and it all began with the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

Right after college, while sojourning in San Francisco, I worked on that city's 1994 lesbian and gay film festival, where I was first introduced to experimentalists like Sadie Benning, George Kuchar, and Matthias Müller. That year, they also screened a documentary about NAMBLA called Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys, a controversial low-budget provocation, seemingly designed to piss people off. Chicken Hawk stared blankly at its subject, sans editorializing. It was, in the parlance of its day, totally in your face.

I was shocked to read on David Hudson's required-reading Greencine blog that the New York Underground Film Festival is shuttering.  More shocked to see that it announced it over a month ago.  More shocked to realize that, in fact, I had barely heard a peep from the NYUFF for years, which probably explains why it's going dark. 

NYUFF was created by Todd Phillips (of "Road Trip" fame) and Andrew Gurland, and later passed on to the very capable hands of Ed Halter.  It was an East Village staple at the Anthology Film Archives, packed with NYU students, mostly.  It was fun and rowdy. 

Hard to gleam what happened, but the tiny sponsor list may be a pointer.  There is something on their site about the current directors of the fest moving on to something called Migrating Forms.  But it has yet to migrate.

From their website, Halter writes that the NYUFF was "created to showcase films that weren't being supported anywhere else. Over time, we evolved into a festival that promoted our own special blend of documentaries, features and experimental work. People came to expect the unexpected at the NYUFF; we became an anti-institutional institution."

It will be missed.