NYUFF. 15th and final.

The New York Underground Film Festival sees its 15th and final edition launching tonight and running through Tuesday. Ed Halter, an early programmer and, for a while, director, looks back in the Voice, tells a few stories and notes: "It's not a true ending, exactly; Kevin [McGarry] and Nellie [Killian] plan to launch another event to replace it next year and continue the mission in some new way.... True to its indie-rock genealogy, the NYUFF has always functioned more like a band than a traditional arts organization—surviving by the seat of its pants, playing on for the thrill of it without a great deal of long-term foresight. A band changes members, alters its style, expands and contracts. Sometimes, a band just decides to call it quits - and hopes to go out in style, while it's still got the knack."

Updated through 4/4.

In the New York Sun, Steve Dollar previews the opening film: "Shot by Vice honchos Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi on handheld video cameras with a 'we must be nuts to come here' first-person approach, Heavy Metal in Baghdad quickly transcends its potential flake factor as it chronicles the struggle of Acrassicauda, a quartet that is purported to be the only heavy metal band in Iraq. The group's name is Latin for 'black scorpion,' an insect common to Iraq, and a usefully descriptive symbol for the band's impressively stinging attack."

For the Voice, Nick Anderman profiles the band, which ended up having to flee Iraq for Damascus and then Istanbul.

For indieWIRE, Benjamin Crossley-Marra looks into the recent wavelet of underground film festivals shuttering up (e.g., Brooklyn's and Cinematexas last year): "[T]he organizers of these festivals claim that this in no way marks the death of anti-institutional filmmaking or distribution, but is actually part of an evolution in the cinematic landscape. They point out that new media technologies have afforded filmmakers countless opportunities in unregulated self-distribution and larger festivals have sprung up in recent years like SXSW, Slamdance and Tribeca, which are programming more and more experimental works."

"There's little doubt that, between the Internet and the DVD market, it's easier to see the kinds of films that, just a few years ago, were dependent on festivals such as NY Underground for any exposure at all," notes Phil Nugent comments at ScreenGrab. "[T]he announcement that this year's festival is the 'final' one is meant to carry a message: this isn't as essential as it once was."

Updates: Reeler ST VanAirsdale talks with Killian and McGarry about their new project will be Migrating Forms.

Online viewing tips. At Rhizome, Lauren Cornell and Ceci Moss: "For readers outside of the New York area, be sure to check out the inventive and hilarious series of trailers commissioned for the festival - and also available online - by Michael Bell-Smith, Peggy Ahwesh, Jim Finn, Ben Coonley and Ewa Einhorn."

"Times change, and whatever local transgressive spirit that might have fueled a downtown Manhattan arts event in the mid-90s has now been apparently fully squashed by the area's total, generally dispiriting gentrification," writes Karina Longworth in the SpoutBlog.

More on Heavy Metal in Baghdad from Leonard Pierce at ScreenGrab.

Update, 4/4: "Over the years the fest has been the nation's premier landing zone for every type of film no one else would show: screaming punk sci-fi, optical abstractions, found-footage statements, transgressive fiction features, counter-culture homage, post-Waters camp, video installations, ageless-teen rebellion, radical politics and what have you," writes Michael Atkinson for the IFC. "It's been a sack full of fighting rats every year as festival dockets go, but that's been part of the festival's charm and, frankly, its necessity, abetting and fueling as it has an entire secret film culture that has always had a hard time finding screens, and will now find times only tougher."

Posted by dwhudson at April 2, 2008 4:18 AM