Static Vision reveals a unique line-up of NSW Premieres, cult-retrospectives, hard-to-find rarities, guest curations and short films centring on queer, punk and underground countercultures, screening exclusively at Pink Flamingo Cinema in Marrickville from November 17–19.
The festival operates on a single-screen all weekend, ensuring no clashes. Punters are invited to engage in multi-film viewing with five-film and weekend-long festival passes at a discounted rate.
Join independent screening collective Static Vision as they bid a (hopefully temporary) farewell to the world’s freshest lo-fi cinema, a space they’ve called their Sydney home for the past five years.
Goodbye, Pink Flamingo opens with Gregg Araki’s seminal Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy, Totally F***ed Up (1993), The Doom Generation (1995) and Nowhere (1997); newly restored and hitting the big screen for the first time in 20 years. A landmark of the New Queer Cinema genre, Totally F***ed Up centres on six queer, alienated teenagers living in LA who form a makeshift family. Araki himself has dubbed it “a kinda cross between avant-garde experimental cinema and a queer John Hughes flick.” Araki’s second entry, the nihilistic road movie The Doom Generation — long marred by studio intervention and only available with a heavily cut, compromised version of the film — will be screened in its recently restored form, as the full, uncut feature with a fresh new scan of the original elements. Nowhere completes the trilogy with a cast of eclectic characters, featuring turns from a number of young celebrities on the cusp of stardom including Ryan Phillippe, Mena Suvari and Denise Richards.
Other highlights include the notoriously hard-to-screen feature from Ken Russell The Devils (1971), a dramatized historical account of the fall of Urbain Grandier, a 17th-century Roman Catholic priest accused of witchcraft after the possessions in Loudun, France. One of the most controversial films of all time, featuring a demonic sexual frenzy among a convent of nuns (led by Vanessa Redgrave, who gives a career highlight performance), The Devils screens Sunday alongside Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Querelle (1982). The German master’s final (and queerest) film, Querelle joins a handsome Belgian sailor on shore leave in the port of Brest who embarks on a voyage of highly charged and violent homosexual self-discovery that will change him forever from the man he once was.
Premiering at IFFR, before taking home an award at TIFF, Terminal USA (1993) is a fever-dream that askews and skewers good-taste as it takes a hatchet to the notion of the ‘model minority’ family. Newly restored in 2K from its original elements, Terminal USA caused a stir upon its premiere in 1994 — partially responsible for a full review of the project funding practices of The National Endowment for the Arts. A film that needs to be seen to be believed, Static Vision are thrilled to finally (officially) screen the feature on Australian shores, 30 years after its creation.
Closing out the festival is the infamous, misunderstood comedy Freddy Got Fingered (2001). Tom Green’s big-budget damning indictment of comedies of the era, a darker-than-black satire of the cultural moment of excess that spawned it, which was mocked and derided by most critics upon release, later building a strong cult following on DVD. The film screens for the first time since its cinematic release.
More Underground Gems
The festival includes the NSW Premiere of T Blockers (2023), the latest queer, punk, horror foray from the most underappreciated, prolific and untapped voice in contemporary Australian genre-filmmaking Alice Maio Mackay (who directed the film at a mere 17 years of age). An avowedly transgender and queer film, shot with a predominantly queer, non-binary and trans cast and crew, T Blockers sees a parasitic infection turning fearful people into alt-right transphobes, hellbent on committing hate crimes.
Another highlight is a curation of short films, four works from two of the most exciting contemporary experimental filmmakers currently on the circuit, US first nations artist Fox Maxy and Bangkok-based artist Tulapop Saenjaroen. The screening will showcase Maxy’s Blood Materials (2021) and Maat (2020), and Saenjaroen’s Squish! (2021) and Notes from the Periphery (2021), four cutting edge works that probe the boundaries of the cinematic form.
Spotlight on Margot Nash
A celebration of the Sydney-based filmmaker and academic Margot Nash, Static Vision will screen three of Nash’s acclaimed works We Aim To Please (1976), Shadow Panic (1989), and Vacant Possession (1995) alongside an in-person discussion with Nash herself reflecting on her filmmaking career. Nash is a striking and underscreened voice in Australian film, beloved by the whole Static Vision and Pink Flamingos team. Her films have been praised for their experimental and feminist slant with all three films in this series presenting a bold exploration and interrogation of conventional ideas of femininity, memory, family, and sexuality.
An Ode to Erotic Cinema
Saturday night’s triple feature includes Elizabeth Purchell’s Ask Any Buddy (2020), a kaleidoscopic snapshot of urban gay life in the gay liberation era – or at least how it looked in the movies, constructed entirely of footage from classic XXX gay cinema, preceded by the short film The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography (1998) from William E. Jones, another groundbreaking essay film which does exactly what it says on the tin, tracing the fall of communism as seen in gay pornography shot at the time in the former Soviet Union.
The most famous name in gay adult art cinema, Fred Halsted’s Sextool (1975) screens from a recent 4k restoration by the Museum of Modern Art and explores a fantasy Los Angeles populated by boxers, leathermen, and sailors, and where racial justice is upside down. It was of the most ambitious and least successful erotic films ever made, shot on 35mm in hopes of Arthouse crossover success to no avail. From the same year, Sex Demon (1975) is a crucial — yet long-lost — piece of queer horror history recently recovered and digitized after being lost for 40 years. Loosely inspired by The Exorcist the film follows Jim, who is possessed by the Devil after unknowingly being gifted a cursed medallion by his older lover, John.
Games from Serenade
Serenade will also take over Pink Flamingo Cinema with a free games space, showcasing a selection of personal and experimental games and interactive works from around the world on rotation throughout the festival.
Friday 17 – Sunday 19 November
Pink Flamingo Cinema, Mothership Studios, 18 – 24 Sydney Street, Marrickville, NSW
Single Tickets
General – $15 / Concession – $12
Opening Night – $35
Passes
Full Festival Pass – $135
5 Film Pass – $65
Opening Night: Gregg Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy – $35
For more program information and to purchase tickets, please visit the festival page here
