Previews - Guerrillas in the midst

An untamed menagerie of cinematic species can fall under the designation “underground film.” As displayed by the second Atlanta Underground Film Festival, such off-the-radar fare includes gonzo documentaries, abstract experiments in form, and enigmatic, subtitled tales from foreign lands.

Festival Director Eric Panter explains that through its program of more than 50 features and shorts, the Atlanta Underground Film Festival seeks to boost genuinely new screen artists, not just “indie” filmmakers already anointed by the Sundance Film Festival.

“We want to showcase emerging, not emerged artists, and get people to see films they’d never get to see.” He acknowledges that audiences accustomed to Hollywood movies should adjust their expectations for underground fare. “Their budgets may be a little low, their production values may be a little low, but they all have something wonderful to say.”

One of Panter’s favorite films in the festival is Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea, which depicts devastating pollution and quirky activism on the California coast. “It’s an amazing documentary, narrated by John Waters, that everybody should be interested in. The whole world’s at stake.”

He’s also excited about the festival’s world premiere of Double Suicide Elegy, a Japanese drama about two adulterous lovers and their failed, subtly humorous efforts to kill themselves. Other festival antiheroes include a guitar-playing atheist devoted to having the words “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance in the documentary Pledge of Allegiance Blues, and a stripper who believes herself to be a man in the dark, psychosexual drama X,Y.

The festival judges screened about 200 entries, many of which were rejected because of low-production problems like inaudible sound.

“We also got some that were just self-serving, like the director who broke up with his girlfriend and made a 30-minute film about how he’s still miserable about it,” says Panter.

Even an underground film festival has to draw the line somewhere.