'Underground' festival worth the trip

When I first heard of the New York Underground Film Festival, the term "underground" intrigued me. It suggested, in my mind, something dark and counterculture. At this festival, I supposed, movies would be shown in some venue far removed from the Loews theater setting to which I, a member of the film bourgeois, am accustomed. I imagined that the films wouldn't be the traditional easy-to-swallow Hollywood pictures, but instead visceral and shocking. If the festival could live up to my uninformed dreams, I knew I would be in for a one-of-a-kind experience.

But when I arrived at the Underground Film Festival, I soon saw that the reality of the event didn't quite fit with my fantastic ideas. Instead of some hole-in-the-wall theater, the venue was the Anthology Film Archive in Manhattan's East Village.

On top of that, those in charge of the festival seemed wary of the term "underground" all together, downplaying it whenever possible because, according to the director of programming Kevin McMurray, the designation is misleading. Its revolutionary connotations were relevant when the festival was first created but are no longer appropriate.

"Our primary purpose is to support the vision of [each] artist," McMurray said, trying hard not to make a grand statement.

My initial impressions left me full of reservations. Still, I knew the true measure of the festival would be whether the films were up to snuff. I opted to watch the most experimental short films to see if I could discover what was unique about this festival.

Readers who were raised on feature-length films might wonder why one should care about short films like these. But those running the festival say the length is irrelevant—it's the quality that's key.

"No one ever reads a great short story and says, 'Imagine if that were a novel,'" said festival director Mohd Johnson, adding that the movies should be judged on their own merits.

With that in mind, I settled in to watch. Before each film, a series of advertisements, at first glance much like those at the multiplex, came onscreen. But instead of the usual Coca-Cola commercials, these advertisements juxtaposed plugs for Altoid mints with photos of genitalia. Instead of quirky facts about Brad Pitt, these trivia questions were about big issues, like "What do you think the world's biggest problem is?" The gags ranged from clever to explicit, and I watched with an almost morbid fascination, waiting to see what would come next.

The first film series was called "Happy Together" and included three documentaries and two short films. Of all the series I would watch that afternoon, this one was the most inconsistent in quality, and the two films stand out in particular.

The first documentary shown, a Swedish film called "Paying Tax Is Sexy," is about an older woman who works at the collection office. The filmmakers ask her probing questions about her place in the bureaucracy until, finally, she exposes a tattoo on her posterior and the film ends. It seems like the punch line to a joke, except one that's overdue by ten minutes and isn't funny.

"Making Me Happy," the second film in the series, is about Shari Bar-On, a narcissistic struggling artist whose New York apartment window overlooks the neon sign of a hotel. When the hotel closes and the sign—which she made part of her first self-portrait when she arrived in the City—is turned off, she falls into a deep depression and says that only another photo of the sign, lit up, can give her hope. It's lucky for the audience that her supporting actor has charisma, a quality that the leading-lady is sorely lacking. He is the one bright spot in this otherwise terrible documentary.

The next film series, called "Fever Dreams," was an eclectic mix of everything from old commercials to surreal cartoons. Its creator, Rebecca Cleman, said she was aiming to convey "confusion." But after watching the footage I couldn't help but think Cleman was gunning for laughs. Perhaps the most memorable part of the series was when a live singer and a piano player jammed out turn-of-the-century diddies with a vibrato so forceful that it would have made Pavarotti blush. To my surprise, although I laughed at this bizarre recital, the rest of the theater watched silently. The viewing experience was unique.

Despite its X-rated title, the final series, "Dukes of the Masturb," was by far the highlight of the evening. Nearly every film was interesting, and each for different reasons.

The sexually explicit and mind-bending "dirtyglitter 1: Damien," about a drugged-up homosexual gigolo attempting to uncover a plot against him, has visually stunning direction and a voiceover done in a very sped up stream of consciousness style, giving the film an incredibly fast pace.

The funniest picture was "Cox and Combers," a crude animation of a rap about George Washington. According to the song, our first president was 24 feet tall and had many sets of... grapefruits. During the rap, the entire crowd, including me, could not stop laughing.

Topping it all off was the highlight of the festival, called "Rhinoplasty." The Mexican film describes a day in the life of several rich, spoiled, bigoted friends, centering on Charlie, the worst of them all. The plot is shocking—and based on a true story. And the performances are so believable that McMurray said that, when he first watched it, he mistook the film for an actual documentary. Although the director said that the Mexican crowd laughed a lot more than the American one—probably because it confronts a social reality, something the Mexican media rarely does—the 40-minute film was well worth the price of admission.

After viewing over 15 short films at the festival, I discovered that underground film wasn't just the counterculture of explicit movies I had pictured in my mind (although as the Altoids with genitalia and the Washington rap indicated, there was definitely some of that). In the brief time that I was at the festival, I saw a vast variety of films. While certainly not all good, the films were at least all unique. If you are looking for an alternative to the run-of-the-mill Hollywood picture, I highly recommend attending the New York Underground Film Festival next year.

Underground Film Festival

The Anthology Film Archive, New York City Pros: Unique selection of movies; calm venue Cons: Some of the movies are pretentious; wild humor not for everyone