The Calgary Underground Film Festival couldn’t have picked a better day to drop the lineup for their CUFF.Docs Festival considering one of the opening films is about a real, live monster.
The locally produced Manson: The Voice of Madness is one of the two documentaries that will open up the festival, which runs Nov. 16-19 at the Globe Cinema. Manson, which is narrated by horror rocker and filmmaker Rob Zombie, shows a year spent by director Buddy Day interviewing the infamous mass murderer Charles Manson as well as tracking down members of his cult, the Manson Family. Day will be in attendance for a Q&A following the screening.
Also showing on that opening Thursday night of the fifth annual event is another doc that spotlights the somewhat less terrifying group of followers of a more charming figure — California Typewriter looks at those writers, artists, etc. who remain staunchly loyal to the antiquated machine in the digital age.
“We have a lot of fun curating this festival, looking for stories and subjects that we feel would connect with our audience, but also bring in new audiences,” festival director and programmer Brenda Lieberman said in a release.
“There is such a wide range to choose from in this year’s selection, but all super interesting and great for conversation, or purely entertainment, whichever mood you are in.”
Other highlights from the mid-November, four-day fest include: Don’t Break Down: A Film About Jawbreaker, which chronicles the story of the influential American punk act; a doc that shows the damage done by the stereotypical portrayal of the convenience store character in The Simpsons, called The Problem With Apu; Power Glove, which is director Andrew Austin’s homage to the history of the Nintendo controller; and Calgarian Ramin Eshraghi-Yazdi’s latest production Name, which features fellow local Andrew Phung from Kim’s Convenience, and shows how one’s name can affect their lives.
Tickets for all of the screenings are on sale now from calgaryundergroundfilm.com at a cost of $10 for general admission, and $8 for CUFF members as well as students and seniors.
Here is the complete list of films at this year’s CUFF.Docs Festival:
Behind the Curtain: Todrick Hall (Dir. Katherine Fairfax Wright)
California Typewriter (Dir. Doug Nichol)
Don’t Break Down: A Film About Jawbreaker (Dir. Tim Irwin & Keith Schieron)
King Cohen (Dir. Steve Mitchell)
Mansfield 66/67 (Dir. P. David Ebersole & Todd Hughes)
Manson: The Voice of Madness (Dir. Buddy Day)
Name (Dir. Ramin Eshraghi-Yazdi)
Shadowman (Dir. Oren Jacoby)
Spettacolo (Dir. Jeff Malmberg & Chris Shellen)
The Crest (Dir. Mark Christopher Covino)
The Judge (Dir. Erika Cohn)
The Power of Glove (Dir. Andrew Austin & Adam Ward)
The Problem with Apu (Dir. Michael Melamedoff)
Who is Arthur Chu? (Dir. Scott Drucker & Yu Gu)
