The time has come for the cinephiles of Sydney to leave their dark home theatre and head out to a dark public theatre for the 2014 Sydney Underground Film Festival. The festival, first run in 2008, aims to bring independent films and documentaries that go above and beyond the established conventions of film-making to the Sydney audience. Or at least that’s what it says on their websites. For many the festival as mainly  the best, and  sometimes only, way to see films in a theatre that may only be released on home media or not released in Australia at all. This years lineup includes:
Shadow Zombie

Part factual, part fictional, this documentary-esque film follows Kim Filth,  a man with a dead end life in the US midwest who roams around at night as his painted face alter-ego Shadow Zombie. The film follows Kim as he deals with life, romance, and the truth of being a misfit.
Suburban Gothic

Raymond (Matthew Gray Gubler) attempts to get out of a post-college slump by moving back in with his parents, he meets local bartender (Becca), and the two start investigating a centuries old murder aided by Raymonds ability to channel the paranormal. It’s The Sixth Sense meets Scooby Doo, and it’s chock full of cameos from genre icons like Ray Wise, Jeffrey “Herbert West” Combs, Muse Watson, John Waters, Jennifer Lynch and Jen and Sylvia Soska.
Why don’t you play in hell?

Exploding out of Japan with frenetic energy and a surreal style, “Why don’t you play in hell?” follows a Japanese pop-punk film-making group as they struggle to make their masterpiece against the backdrop of gang violence and organised crime. An experiment in film-making that also serves as an excuse to take a chunk out of every genre in the book, and smash them together at 500 kilometres an hour.
The Green Inferno
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6fyb8vW6Y8
The most highly anticipated film in this years festival is also one of the more highly anticipated films of the year, at least for exploitation fans. Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel) draws inspiration from Rugero Deodato’s “Cannibal Holocaust” and Umberto Lenzi’s “Cannibal Ferox”, in his own amazonian adventure which focus’ on a group of environmentalists who, after a plane crash deep in the jungle, are taken captive by a group of bloodthirsty natives looking to make them their next meal. A complete gorefest, this film is not for those with faint hearts or full stomachs.
All these films and more will be screened over four days from Thursday September 4 to Sunday September 7 at The Factory in Marrickville. Tickets can be bought for individual sessions, or you can buy a single day pass or a pass for the entire festival.
For more information visit http://www.suff.com.au/