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 After being inspired by John
Waters’ visit to the Edinburgh International Film Festival during 2007, EIFF
Artistic Director Hannah McGill has announced a new strand of cult films for
2008’s edition.
Under The Radar will play host to
films that ‘deploy low budgets to imaginative effect and range from being
variously kitsch, gory, disturbing and hilarious.’ Casting its net wider than
simply horror/sci-fi/fantasy – which the EIFF had previously catered for with
such strands as Night Moves – the selection aims to ‘break boundaries of both
art and entertainment, drawing in elements of experimental video and gallery
art as well as subversive comedy and extreme genre cinema’.
The trailer for the 63rd festival, made up of 1,000 stills and created by O Street and Pete Dibdin is previewed below:
Films so far announced include
the International Premiere of Argentinean film The Third Pint, Luciano
Podcaminsky’s ‘experimental travelogue shot on Super 8, which follows the
reminiscences of a man who became invisible after drinking three pints’ and
Strange Girls from US director Rona Mark which ‘explores the rotten underbelly
of female relationships gone wrong, through the strange world of twin sisters
in Pittsburgh who happily follow their perverse passions for porn and
trepanation until a handsome man becomes between them’.
Films hailing from our shores
include Bigga Than Ben: A Russians’ Guide To Ripping Off London, S A Halewood’s
‘dark and highly pertinent comedy [which] is a step-by-step guide to defrauding
banks, shoplifting, joyriding on the tube and cooking crack cocaine’ whilst of
particularly interest will be the World Premiere of Crack Willow, the feature
debut of director Martin Radich which is described as a ‘shocking and highly
original interpretation of the psychological effects of social decay’. Given
that it seems to be an entension of Radich’s excellent short film Dog’s Mercury (one of the best UK shorts of the
past couple of years, yet sadly under-praised in some quarters) the feature promises a to be quite something.
Rounding off the announced films so far are Blood Car, a ‘darkly
comic horror which follows a teacher who invents a car that runs on human blood
to combat the high price of petrol’ and the World Premiere of Spike - a horror-cum-romance.
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