During five days, the LUFF gives you the opportunity to immerse yourself in the heart of underground cinema and music with the showing of about 120 films as well as unique concerts. From the Beat Generation to Richard Kern, through Corrupted or Charlemagne Palestine, the audience will discover avant-gardist, radical artists, some of whom have also sometimes been criticised and censured, but who share a common quality: an approach and an engagement which are genuine. Get the feel of this seventh edition:
Cinema:
-Beat Generation: original retrospective of the group of artists guided by the writers William Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Jack Kerouac (On The Road) and Allen Ginsberg (Howl), who have transgressed the conservative values of the USA of the fifties with radical actions. Pieces from Jonas Mekas, Robert Frank, William Burroughs or Ron Rice will be programmed.
- a look on the Japanese poet and playwright Shuji Terayama, whose film work is short but intense. On the programme, notably, the surreal and controversial Empereur Tomato Ketchup (1970), Cache-cache pastoral (competing against one another at the Cannes Festival in 1974) and Les Fruits de la passion (1981), with an unlikely cast composed of Klaus Kinski and of Arielle Dombasle. Nothing less!
- the coming of the master of the New York underground cinema Richard Kern: cinema rabble-rouser without equal, and one that takes arms against the conservative Reagan's America, Richard Kern is with no doubt the most seen and must-see film-maker of the New York underground scene of the eighties. His Super 8 short movies were shot with rudimentary means and interpreted by non professional actors who were crazy enough to appear in scenes where blood and debauchery abounded. Theses short films first set the stage on fire during concerts of Jim Thirlwell (Foetus), Sonic Youth – also authors of the brilliant soundtracks – before spreading in the world with frenzy. With the presence of Richard Kern.
Out of sight, a tribute to Albert Hofmann: the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD in the thirties, died on 29th April of this year at the age of 102. This tribute will present the documentary Hofmann's Potion, directed by Connie Littlefield (2002). Other films will show, in a pertinent and funny way, the contradictions that this discovery has provoked in society, between youth's euphoria and the authorities' worries.
Closing film – world premiere: Bad Biology, from Frank Henenlotter. Enthusiasts of unorthodox cinema know Frank Henenlotter for his Basket Case (1982), underground film with a heavy atmosphere which met with an unexpected international success. Seventeen years after Basket Case 3, he at last comes back to staging with Bad Biology, a love story obviously not like the others! With the presence of the film-maker and actor Anthony Sneed.
And also : post-mortem cinema Kyotaka Tsurisaki, Sci-Fi footage from the Vault, Music in Films, Dennis Nyback’s Archives, Richard Sandler – the eyes of New York, etc.
Music:
- the coming, exceptional like all the others, of Corrupted, whose concerts in Europe are extremely rare. With their "sludge doom metal", these Japanese people who run away from interviews and photographers will no doubt make the walls of Montbenon’s Casino tremble. Thursday 16th October.
- surround sounds and laser show of Haswell & Hecker : Russel Haswell and Florian Hecker got together in 2003 and have since then been working on the famous concept of the «UPIC Music Composing System» of Iannis Xenakis. A unique must-see experience. Thursday 16th October.
- the last minute guest Charlemagne Palestine, minimalist composer from New York who will give some softness and rest to our ears. With his grand piano, his fags and his cognac, he nonetheless has the reputation of a disrespectful man. Friday 17th October.
