“A salute to your discernment”
Richard Wolstencroft - Festival Director

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep a bower quiet for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.” Book one, Endymion, John Keats.

“Inexorable, hesitating, terrible as fate, the great task and question is approaching: how shall the earth as a whole be governed? And for what shall ‘man’ as a whole – no longer just one people, one race – be raised and bred?” Nietzsche, from the late notebooks, 1885.

Congratulations dear reader to your taste in selecting the Fourth Melbourne Underground Film Festival for your visual pleasure, visceral enjoyment and eidetic confrontation. I open this address with two guiding quotes; one from Keats, expressing the romantic spirit that is capable of overcoming the cynicism of postmodernism and another from Nietzsche posing the question of the past 120 years, how should humanity as a whole govern itself. We hope to present to you, discerning viewer, with our most fully realised Festival yet! The theme this year is Politics and we have a veritable horn o’ plenty from the many differences of filmmaking, on theme and off, to share with you, in the coming eleven days.

We at MUFF have always been romantics! How could we not be? Look back at our festivals short history and you will see a struggle to bring this event from humble beginnings into the semblance of a truly inspirational and exciting cultural manifestation. Only romantic spirits could pull off such an absurdly difficult task against many critics, odds, much adversity and the usual difficulties of fate and circumstance. I would like to thank Rebecca Sutherland my constant companion on this voyage of the good ship MUFF and all the other team, sponsors, friends and collaborators both past and present (they are thanked by name on the credits page) who have brought us to the temporal juncture of 2003.

I must note a few sponsors who have risen above the call of duty this year. Peter Davey from Granada hats off for your continuing support and friendship. David Butcher from Cinevision deserves a special mention for providing many dubs this year for our astute jury and the media. Honestly, guerrilla filmmakers out there, if you want dubs and a good deal go see Dave Butcher and tell him MUFF sent you! You’ll get looked after, old school style. Bill Marshall, founding sponsor and spiritual adviser to the MUFF cause deserves particular mention for his wisdom, experience and guidance. Also Stu from Platypus must be thanked who helped us put together the wild street selection to rock your world. Diamond geezers all.

It must be something Jung said about the symmetry of the number four because this year at MUFF we are jam packed with mischief and mayhem. Here are the Festival Director’s highlights: Asia Argento’s scorching hot opening night flick “Scarlet Diva”, “Ivan’s XTC” a coked out Hollywood exec’s downfall, “The Magician” a Melbourne hit man’s video diary and one of the best OZ films ever entered in MUFF - a must see!!!, “Duck! The Carbine High Massacre” a recreation of Columbine high school shootings by exploitation production house Factory 2000, “I Am Curious: Yellow”- the politics of sex Swedish 60’s style, “Disinformation” the Richard Metzger UK TV series never shown in OZ, “Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping” anti-capitalist and globalization prankster and comedian, “Dark Secrets” - inside the elite secret society of politicians and businessmen at the Bohemian Grove retreat that supposedly secretly control the world and worship a giant Owl, the ace Free Radicals section with the brilliant “Punishment Park”, “Plug Me In” and street art expose. Also playing, “Gartel: the Art of fetish” featuring international guest and digital artist Laurence Gartel in person with Fetish/SM party afterwards, historical revisionist documentaries from David Irving and others, “CKY” madness from Bam Margera and crew from “Jackass” and pro skater fame, the brilliant Jonas Mekas retrospective all on film from the US archives and more great Aussie underground films like Bill Mousoulis “Lovesick”, Mark Savage’s “Trail of Passion” and Shannon Young’s “Razor Eaters”, plus Sexy MUFF 2, underground film makers forum and Mini-MUFF shorts and our censorship protest. MUFF 4 is the first Festival we have planned that truly lives up to the original dream of what we set out to achieve.

Oh, and did I mention Chopper Read is on the MUFF jury? Yes a first for Mark Brandon Read, a stint on a jury, I believe he has faced one or two in the past but never actually sat on one. So we have decided to correct this gross oversight and get Chopper’s opinion on the best in underground Oz and O/S movies. Cool or what?!

Talking of the real transcending into art. Let’s examine our theme and allow me to wax lyrical about politics and what we hope to achieve with this festival concept.

So what is the political? Is it different political schools of thought like Marxism , Communism and Socialism, Liberal Democracy, Utilitarianism, Anarchism and Fascism? Is it the recent debates that surround notions like Autonomy, Justice and Equality with political thinkers such as Rawls, Dworkin, Nozick, Anderson and Nagel. Is politics the postmodern/deconstructive text of mostly left wing intellectuals like Derrida, Deleuze, Zizek, Baudrillard, Foucault and Said? Or is politics the pure application of force and power, ‘might is right’, as we have just witnessed in the recent incursion into Iraq and Afghanistan.

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We hope to inspire you to dialogue with some of the beliefs systems, thinkers and debates mentioned above and to most of all take Action. That’s right we want you to fight for what you believe in at MUFF and from the beautiful B&W image by Gilles Perez that adorns our catalogue and publicity materials we are open to all ideas on how to achieve this.

Indeed, it may be only through say a violent revolution that the current American Empire could ever be changed, altered or overthrown. A cabal of the US plutocracy, business and a small right wing political clique is exerting obviously unheard of power in major Western nations, making notions such as representative democracy null and void.

What do I think of this political matrix? Can it be defeated? The answer is hopefully yes. I shall share my own theories on the matter and would be delighted to hear yours if we meet throughout the festival.

Well I have written here and there on a desire to found a new political ontology and have studied Martin Heidegger on this issue and will reveal some of what I have uncovered. Heidegger, I’m sure some of you will know, was a member of the Nazi party from 1933 to 1945. He held a position of Rector at Freiburg University and attempted to bring both the University and subtly the party under the umbrella of his thought. He resigned after only two years disillusioned by the direction Nazism was taking. This controversy has sparked many books either condemning or excusing Heidegger on various grounds, all relatively weak in thrust. The key to this debate is to embrace Heidegger’s political conception of Fascism: a confrontation between modern Dasein (us) and the enframing essence of technology and recast it along the paths and depth of his thinking, early and later. A ‘transcendental fascism’ I have dubbed it, that is non racist, non sexist and equipped to fight the encroachment of the dogmas of metaphysics whether it be Christian, Islamic, Scientific, Technological or Humanistic. The dream is of a confrontation with the ‘will to power’ as active nihilism and the possibility of rekindling the remembrance of Being, bringing into existence a second Greek epoch. I did tell you I was a romantic, didn’t I? And why the fuck not!

Transcendental fascism as a concept interests me because it is transcendental. The fascism of Bush, Sharon, Blair and pals is omnipresent in these times and unadulterated in its desire to control the planet. A new conception of fascism will take into account the inherent paradoxes of its nature and dialogue and interact with other political philosophies worthy of integration like Anarchism, Socialism and conceptions of justice, equality, liberty and autonomy. One of my philosophy professors said this theory sounded nothing at all like fascism, and I replied “good”. But why the moniker fascism at all? What is that line from ‘Salo’, “We fascists are the only true anarchists” that haunts me? Well I believe fascism to be about the brute application of power and that all politics is inherently fascist in nature. Why transcendental then? Because in the name of Sex, I want to change and temper this brute fact but still retain the only force possible to truly fight the oppressive status quo! A paradox, of course, like the fact that there are beings rather than nothing.

It should be noted that I have played some historical revisionist material in MUFF 4 for reasons of freedom of speech. I do feel though the need to debate and not exclude at least semi reasoned questioners like David Irving. I’m not about to sit here and deny any event like the Jewish holocaust; as the actions of the einsatzgruppen, the destruction and liquidation of Polish Ghettoes, obscene racism and deportations, etc are well documented and you will find even Irving doesn’t argue with all of this. His arguments are detailed, the devil being in the detail and while I don’t agree with his outlook, I believe he has a right to freedom of speech and find no one else fighting for it. I saw a revisionist history of Mao on sale happily at Readings, which made no media fan fare and many such histories of Napoleon, Churchill, World War 1, etc. that exist and flourish. Why is the Jewish holocaust given such precedence and almost quasi-religious status, dogmatic legal protections and aura? The book “The Holocaust Industry” by Norman Finkelstein, a compatriot of Chomsky is most enlightening for those interested in further reading.

The importance of art as a guide and foundation for any future politics is two fold. Firstly, art indeed holds the key and saving power to our tricky situation. Through poetry, literature, filmmaking and the other visual arts a clearing for dialogue exists where our political being could once again come to the fore. Secondly, art, creativity, play and the imagination has the power to absorb the destructive side of human nature and transmogrify it to its world. When we have finally learned to channel the dark sides of our nature into art and away from the real world we will see the manifest psychologically curative power of pornography, violent cinema and even evil in film. This revelation is a destiny. The struggle meanwhile must continue in both the real and imaginary worlds of the subject. Some feel to change the political state of affairs of capitalist globalization is akin to halting the Roman Empire in 40 AD. This may be so! But it is no excuse for apathy, ignorance and indolence. The resolute human being must fight on and hope against hope that perhaps one day ‘a god could save us all’.

Take in the Festival and do something about what you believe in while you still have the opportunity to do so.