The Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival (LUFF) offers an extensive program for its 21st edition. From Wednesday to Sunday, a hundred films, sound performances, workshops and other exhibitions will come to life at the Montbenon casino and in various satellite spaces.
Culino-gastric performances are expected to open with the feature film “Flux Gourmet” by Peter Strickland, in which actor Asa Butterfield (“Sex Education”) plays one of the main roles.
The screening will be followed by a special screening, with the world premiere of the film “Never Gate” by Geneva directors Elena Montesinos and JD Schneider, a “crazy psychedelic outfit”.
In international competition
During the five days of festivities, 51 feature and short films will take part in the international competition and its five categories. It will open with the European premiere of the very strange “All Jacked Up Full of Worms”, a “long grimy and hallucinatory nightmare”.
Two international premieres will be presented: “Cuddly Toys”, by the young director Kansas Bowlings, a committed work evoking the dangers of being a young woman in the United States. As for “Breathing Happy” by Shane Brady, it tackles with great sensitivity the theme of addiction or rather of sobriety during the Christmas period.
>> To see: the trailer for “Breathing Happy” in English
The journeys of key figures in independent cinema will be honored in ten retrospectives and thematic carte blanche, including that of the Bulgarian anti-diva Mara Mattuschka. The “camp” cinema, born in the 1960s and tending towards excess, as well as its queer and grotesque dimension will be presented in “Bad Taste is Good Taste: Underground Camp Melodrama”.
Sound experiments
On the musical side, the Salle des Fêtes du Casino will host no less than 22 performances. This parade of artists will begin with the first face-to-face meeting of the nine artists of a.hop., followed by Nacre’s solo project which will deconstruct the codes of classic musical compositions by exploring a highly saturated guitar sound.
Among the other proposals, the New Yorker emme will come to scream in the crowd in a dark choreography. On Yee Lo will combine her passions for experimental music and cooking by offering a culinary performance whose ingredients will have been prepared the day before during her “Hacking Cooking” workshop. The Japanese duo Shojiki will offer him to listen to Scotch tape which he will rewind using a motor system.
>> To listen: a musical chronicle of the LUFF
Regarding the festival off, the esplanade of Montbenon will host eight interdisciplinary projects from the underground scene. They will present universes with heterogeneous singularities in free entry. The event will also be back on the air with LUFF FM in collaboration with the stations Radio 40 (Lausanne) and Radio Bollwerk (Bern).
Collective telepathy
Among other events, Elena Biserna will varnish her latest work “Walking From Scores”. As part of her “Feminist Steps” workshop, the artist will guide participants through the streets at night to listen to public space from a feminist and queer perspective.
Finally, Robert Barry’s installation will broadcast a sound piece simultaneously between the Montbenon casino and the contemporary art association Circuit. A workshop organized by the artist on the theme of collective telepathy will also be held at the School of Jazz and Current Music in Lausanne.
ats / eye
