By Guest Contributor Marc Lissenburg
The biggest accolade I can give the Dead By Dawn International Film Festival is the fact my continued attendance ensures I devour every delectable morsel projected onto the silver screen. Annually, without fail, darkly feverish cinematic delicacies are chosen with unbridled passion and scheduled with logical precision. If you can in any way relate to that concept, for 4 days in April, The Filmhouse on Lothian Road, Edinburgh becomes a horror fans’ Mecca!
2019 incredibly witnessed Dead by Dawn in its 26th year. With assured quality to match its longevity, what sights did festival director Adele Hartley have to show us….?
THURSDAY
Along with 19 programmes showcasing a staggering total of 66 films, guest of honour this year was the subversively masterful American director, Jeff Lieberman. Modestly claiming that, after John Landis last year, having a guest with the same initials was easier on the DbD email filing system, Jeff was invited to the stage to officially launch the event.
With the festival boasting 5 of Lieberman’s finest flicks, there were plenty of opportunities to listen to his charming anecdotes, some of which even managed to refrain from mentioning LSD! Jeff explained that his love for cinema began in the 1950s when gorging on the plethora of atomic horror flicks that were essentially inspired by nuclear war propaganda peddled by the US Government. When the 1970s rolled round and atomic bombs were replaced by misinformation regarding the effects of Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on the human brain, it appeared a cynically obvious choice to conjure a yarn that exploited this fear to violent extremes.
Fittingly, the inaugural film was a personal favourite of mine, 1978’s BLUE SUNSHINE. The story about the belated side effects of a menacingly potent strain of LSD transforming dabblers into murderous follicularly-challenged psychopaths exudes 1970s panache and satire.
(I discuss Jeff Lieberman a little more when relaying a discussion I had with a lovely lady of Latvian heritage if my memory serves me correct who I ‘purely by chance’ bumped into during one of the sensibly placed festival intermissions…)
But for now, back to Thursday evening’s proceedings and next up was the ‘One Big Happy Family’ selection of short films. Of the five films featured, it was MAGGIE MAY by director Mia Kate Russell from Australia that really resonated. It’s a tale of female siblings who deal with the passing of their mother in very different ways which results in accentuated languor in its purest and most vicious form.
My journey north of the border had started to take its toll at this point, so it was interesting to note that Dennison Ramalho’s THE NIGHTSHIFTER was scheduled for 1.15am, resulting in an eye burning finish just after 3am. Adele’s fervent prologue regarding the film went on to explain that the reason for such an uncompromising time slot was due to its ‘injury time’ inclusion after the schedule had effectively been agreed.
If our empress of ceremonies’ words stoked my interest, it is fair to say my heavy eye lids were truly obliterated with the opening frames of this Brazilian masterpiece. Sao Paulo’s finest marching powder couldn’t have done a better job – basically, I woke the fuck up and was so appreciative of the efforts put into getting this picture crammed onto an already bustling schedule.
The tale concerned Stenio (Daniel de Oliveira), a morgue worker who engages in a bit of cadaver chatter while going about his nightly duties. While these surreal nocturnal conversations usually just involve the corpses disbelieving their demise or craving revenge, events take on a sinister turn when Stenio actually acts on a bit of advice offered. The fusion of the deceitful domestic milieu, along with a depressingly gritty and plausible backdrop, easily lured me into the narrative. Add to that lashings of autopsy-based gore and the bar of debut features was set astronomically high, to say the least. A stunning piece of filmmaking and one that I was so grateful to witness on the big screen. The appetite had been whetted and the touch paper lit. An awesome start…
FRIDAY
Friday’s programme kicked off in beautifully bizarre fashion with the ‘What You Make It’ shorts. ARTURO simply blew my mind. It was flagrantly my favourite animated short. This 7-minute oddity from Italy’s Alessandro Bavari, complete with thumping soundtrack, would be the perfect aperitif to Gasper Noes’ CLIMAX in my humble opinion.
Other personal highlights on the programme were Kimmy Gatewood’s morosely comical CONTROL, a 16-minute serving of suicidal preparation that admittedly left a lump in the throat. ALTERNATIVE MATH provided some hilarity with its political correctness on steroids clip about a teacher correctly marking a student down in a test for making basic error go viral.
Another debut feature was to follow in the form of G Patrick Condon’s brain frying INCREDIBLE VIOLENCE. The picture begins with a filmmaker confiding to a friend that he has squandered away the quarter of a million bucks he was granted to finance a movie he was contracted to make. His predicament is compounded by the fact that he has been loaned the money from a law firm. In other words, he is fucked! What follows is a devious tactic to conjure a horror film with no funds.
As the title suggests, this was an arduous watch at times, with some daring sequences graphically depicting torture and humiliation. The mazy plot as the film progressed was a little perplexing I felt. However, the sheer boldness of Condon to announce himself as a director to the world with such an audacious piece of cinema shone through and ultimately justified its place on the schedule.
‘It’s the End of the World’ assortment of mini movies followed after welcoming director Max Isaacson to the festival. His 12-minute apocalyptic chunk of kickass, PIPE, was made all the more enjoyable when hearing tales of 12 year old actress Elizabeth Hunter’s confidence when going for her role as Pup. Max was approachable and it was lovely to see him attend most of the screenings and indulging as a fan not just a guest. Cool jacket too!
Up next was another Lieberman feature, JUST BEFORE DAWN, and the onstage Q & A that complimented it provided more light-hearted but factual insight into his individual style as a film maker. The outdoor sequences seemed death defying at times, though I am not sure the audience was entirely convinced by his claim that, despite being friends with Tobe Hooper, he has never seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Mmmmm….
We were then onto something that has intrigued me from the instant I first heard about it – Juuso Laatio and Jukka Vidgren’s HEAVY TRIP. While not in any way a horror movie, this Finnish, Norwegian and Belgium production is one of those films you walk away from the festival telling your friends, “you NEED to see this!”
Initially I felt it was a little too slapstick for my palate, but once the characters and narrative started to ripen, assisted by some razor-sharp dialogue, the movie won me over big time. It’s a simple enough tale of a Finnish Black Metal band, Impaled Rektum, who have been honing their “Symphonic post-apocalyptic reindeer-grinding Christ-abusing extreme war pagan Fennoscandian metal” skills for 12 years before finally getting their big break at the biggest music festival in Norway. Unfortunately dealing with sleazy promoters and having a vocalist who projectile vomits when faced with an audience hinders their evolution!
The high tempo of jokes and storyline fuelled with the energy of Scandinavian metal (helped along by Filmhouse’s state of the art sound system) made this perfect Friday night viewing.
The risk of missing something distinctively twisted and beautiful meant I fuelled myself with caffeine and reserved those elegant pint glasses of ice cold exuberantly priced Erdinger Weissbier for post-screening bonding with fellow attendees. So tonight, with a sensible finish time of just after 1am and the bar still open for a couple of hours, the perfect opportunity presented itself to clink glasses with friends old and new and discuss personal highlights so far. Cheers…!
SATURDAY
Saturday began with more high calibre and diverse shorts by way of the ‘Natural Selection’ film programme. Personal highlights were Alex Noyer’s beautifully crafted and vicious CONDUCTOR whose 7-minute tale involving a music competition with an ominously violent climax really impressed. And special mention has to go to TJ Power’s YOUR CALL IS IMPORTANT TO US. It is a genius slice of call centre hell that not only culminates in a ludicrously extreme finale, but also managed to extort my sincerest sympathies for the initially abhorrent victim’s torment!
The subsequent film earned my vote for ‘Best Feature’ and this opinion was apparently shared by other attendees, as it walked away with the prestigious Audience Award chainsaw for that category. TOUS LES DIEUX DI CIEL (All the Gods in the Sky) started life as a short film in the form of award winning short UN CIEL BLEU PRESQUE PARFAIT (A Nearly Perfect Blue Sky).
Rather than simply expanding the original yarn by process of extension, enigmatic director Quarxx has literally taken the original short movie, diced it up and used the originally filmed scenes as pillars for a mesmerizing panorama to be built around.
Apart from learning the movies’ naissance via its introduction, I had no prior clues as to narrative, subject matter or style. I am certain this lack of knowledge was hugely beneficial as this powerfully captivating piece of cinema positively enthralled me for the full 110 minutes.
Although the imagery was at times extremely outlandish and bizarre, the story had me gripped in reality, with its unique depiction of anxiety driven depression and twisted guardianship. Admittedly distressing at times, Quarxx poetically manages to treat each character with the utmost compassion despite their deplorably bleak plights.
I make no apologies for the vagueness of this summary as I feel the impact of this fascinating piece of cinematic brilliance needs to be encountered with as little preparation as possible in order to experience its full effects. Simply genius.
The ‘2D and Deranged Shorts’ programme that followed provided a rich tapestry of warped animation peppered with sharp wit and surrealism. Pick of the bunch for me was David Barlow-Krelina’s CATERPILLARPLASTY with a premise concerning the concept of society’s fixation on physical flawlessness. The Canadian short proved to be a marvellous blend of weirdly repulsive sequences that, despite their peculiarity, still made a blatantly obvious statement.
The Saturday agenda of Dead by Dawn is traditionally a monstrous one. Looking at your watch at 21.45hrs with the comfort there is still over 8 hours of weird and wonderful entertainment to gorge on is testament to that.
CUTTERHEAD, the debut feature from Rasmus Kloster Bro, was next on the bill and proved to be a truly gruelling watch at times. It centres on a reporter Rie (Christine Sonderris) who joins the workforce structuring an extension to the underground transport system in Copenhagen. Initially, the movie plays out as a fly on the wall visual document as it cannily immerses the viewer in the confined setting. Bereft of natural light, with the intricate processes by the workers shrewdly woven into the dialogue, the style of the movie is astutely authentic.
What develops is an extremely effectual depiction of claustrophobic catastrophe. The infectious use of sound made all the more potent by accompanying panic stricken scenes of complete darkness. Not content simply to submerge the viewer in the stifled environment, the proverbial mind-fuck of needing blind faith in crisis rescue I found remarkably effective, as our protagonists are faced with the unenviable task of shielding their sanities. I highly recommend this picture and was privileged to be subjected to its full efficacy thanks to the pitch-black theatre.
Fried chicken courtesy of a certain Colonel admittedly provided my evening sustenance for the full four nights. While this gourmet choice may seem somewhat unadventurous, watching the security guy on the door really earn his pennies defending the Colonel’s honour was too irresistible not to enjoy on a nightly basis. How fitting then that a programme of ‘Finger Licking Good’ shorts was next up.
I recently learned that the grand master purveyors of sizzled poultry dropped that particular slogan from their marketing propaganda back in 2011. Apparently it was considered too “food-centric” as the corporation aimed for a more “healthy eating” image. Ridiculous eh?!! What next? A Disney remake of A SERBIAN FILM just to keep things “nice”? Anyway. I digress…
I am sure my 1970s comrades are familiar with the aforementioned slogan, along with old wives’ tales regarding deep fried rodents being inadvertently served up. But there were no Kentucky Fried Rats in this programme of shorts. Oh no, it was WAY worse than that! Food-related subversive short films featuring foul mouthed psychotic grannies, harmonious hilarity, bizarre TV commercials and a heart-rending tale of a pet bunny were entreatingly diverse. But it was a bowl full of retch inducing acne flavoured retribution in the form of Kate MCoid’s IT’S NOT CUSTARD that tested the old gag reflexes. Despite running at a mere 7 minutes, it still managed to lay the foundations for a grossly effective punch line.
The Lieberman Late show double bill was soon to be upon us. Interestingly for me, this coincided with the interesting exchange I referred to earlier. You see, despite this being a film festival and not a convention, guest of honour Jeff Lieberman very kindly agreed to sign and pose for selfies with fans for free. He also brought a wonderful array of rare goodies to tempt attendees to cross his palm with silver.
OK so… some of you may have heard of so-called “pubic triangle” in Edinburgh, duly named due to the trio of strip bars. I admit my thirst got the better of me at one point and no sooner had the head settled on my pint of Tenants that I heard those enticing words..
“You want dance? Just twenty pound….”
“Oh hi. Erm… no I am having a quick drink in-between movies.”
“Look… I do you dance, ten pound…”
“Oh right… well…. you see I would…. but Jeff Lieberman is doing this signing at 11pm. I mean he has some amazing stuff. Like he raided his office or something and brought them over for the festival. Lobby cards, reproduction original posters and a selection of Blu- rays. If you’ve got your own stuff, he’ll willingly sign it for free but anything off his stall is £20. Really unique stuff, so I am kind of saving my cash till then”.
“Jeff who?”
“Lieberman! Lie-ber-man. You know, he is known as “Lebo” in the industry. He did SQUIRM and DEAD BEFORE DAWN. You ever heard of that movie BLUE SUNSHINE? Wow you MUST see it. It has this scene right at the beginning. This guy is, like, crooning to this lass at a party and… well I won’t spoil it but there is no gore, no blood, no violence, no nudity but the scene STILL shocks the bejeezus out of me every goddam time! Its sooo cool! “
…sighs.. “Ok, I do you dance for five pound…”
(Smiles knowingly at the camera and winks… fade to black…)
Back at the Filmhouse (via the cash point), and after snatching a wonderful memoir from the Lieberman marketplace, the Late Show featuring SQUIRM and SATAN’s LITTLE HELPER was about to begin. The wonderful introduction by Lebo himself explained the simple inspiration for each movie. For the former, it was how he was haunted by a childhood experience of watching his brother electrocute the soil in order to ascertain worms for a fishing trip. This gross-out memory when later mixed with LSD quite simply gave way to the slithery shocker that that is SQUIRM.
The latter, on the other hand, came to be via observing folk who don gorilla fancy dress outfits feeling it somehow grants them the right to grope female party goers and be a complete and utter dick in general. Henceforth, SATANS LITTLE HELPER was spawned.
The Saturday night programme is where your constitution for late night horror really gets a rigorous workout. But, knowing there is only one day to go was motivation enough for this attendee to endure scorching retinas and see it through to the final credits.
SUNDAY
I had a decent enough rest given the circumstances, but was still somewhat fatigued as I dragged myself into the bathroom of my humble B & B on Sunday at around 11am. Luckily the good folk who ran it must have realised this and very graciously turned off the hot water for the day. Thanks guys! An ice-cold shower and pint of steaming hot coffee later I was in place for the final day.
The two short film programmes that graced the final day, ‘Splendid Isolation’ and ‘Red in Tooth and Claw’ proved to be another eclectic blend of skewed originality. It was from this collection that the joint winners for “Best Shorts” emerged. Conin brothers Chris (director) and Sam (cinematographer) along with actor Paul Bullion were on hand to introduce their 12-minute film, OSCARS BELL, revealing it was inspired by true events. The intriguing little film centring on a simple family camping trip really delivers a shockingly eerie climax and is definitely worth tracking down.
Sharing the Audience Award for Best Short was another British film directed by Jonny Kenton, DEAD BIRDS. Weighing in at 35 minutes, the mix of black comedy and poignancy topped off with some deliciously-framed gore got my nod.
YOU MIGHT BE THE KILLER (Brett Simmons) on the other hand did little to stoke my interest, most likely due to my subjective aversion to so called comedy horror. While that personal stance is often compromised by the sharp ingenuity of certain short films, I struggle to maintain interest with full length productions of that ilk. This hip Scream-esque reference-laden slasher destroys any notion of plot ambiguity with its very title. The regular “counsellor death count” graphic that peppered the movie with annoying regularity had a hint of a one trick pony to me. It did however rouse my fellow audience throughout and appeared to be generally well received.
The final day had two new features. LUZ, a German production written and directed by Tilman Singer. Introduced as having a ‘fractured narrative”, this relatively short feature of 70 minutes is disorientating and unorthodox, with a distinctly vintage feel without overstating the era. The seemingly dispersed, almost sketch-like sequences eventually converge to skilfully blend the story together in a very clever way. The result was a picture very satisfying and enough to entice this viewer into a revisit for subsequent viewings.
The customary hoot that is ‘Punk Pass the Parcel’ meant a flurry of little black packages looped around the auditorium with gusto! There were no gimmicks here as the little prizes revealed themselves to be a crop of current Arrow Video Blu-ray releases. Impressive.
It was, however, a little disappointing that the time-honoured Shit Film Amnesty only had three entries. Can’t complain, as I didn’t contribute myself, but I already have next year’s donation wrapped in Andrex with a damning verdict ready to be inked!
The festival was sadly nearly at its end. The closing feature, REMOTE CONTROL, was a very fitting way for the final Lieberman feature to screen. The scheduled post screening Q & A gave way to a more informal ‘meet and greet’ in the bar afterwards.
I had no plans to write a review before attending this year’s festival. But there is such a unique spirit to Dead by Dawn that I felt compelled to spread the word. The pure devotion and drive that goes into organising this event is something to behold. I very naively had this vision that festival organisers had filmmakers petitioning them to showcase their wares and therefore being faced with the simple task of cherry-picking what they thought worthy. How wrong I was!
Digital streaming of movies to miniscule devices continues to promote ‘convenience’ above ‘enchantment’ when it comes to indulging in films. If that is not enough, the vile terms ‘consumers’ and ‘content providers’ have nauseatingly made it increasingly complex to negotiate a film onto the festival schedule when not dealing directly with the filmmaker.
Dead by Dawn, however, radiates a deep love and respect for the uniquely magical cinema experience which, for me, is nothing short of inspiring.
Adele Hartley, we salute you…
Dead by Dawn Festival runs every April in Edinburgh. For further information, check out the official website: deadbydawn.co.uk