Submission now open! Early Bird rates until Sept. 1st
March 2020
Welcome to The Sixth Vancouver Badass Film Festival March 2020
Badass V feature Films selections
7pm Polterheist (UK, 2018)
VIFF/ Vancity Theatre
Fri Mar 29: Hard Brexit UK double bill
6pm hosted opening party
7pm Polterheist (UK, 2018)
In the first of our opening Hard Brexit double bill, two gangsters are given 72 hours to discover the whereabouts of a stash of drug money stolen by their boss. There’s only one problem…they just murdered him. Frantic to find the cash, the hapless criminals kidnap a psychic medium and force her to contact the dead gang boss.
Presented by Australian UK-based Director Dave Gilbank with moderated Q&A to follow the screening.
Opening Reception from 6pm hosted by Jesse Inocalla and Gidget Gravedigger (filmmaker awards nominees)
"Polterheist has cult classic written all over it; lock-stock and ghosts. It’s well-written and boasts great acting throughout. The violence is hard-hitting without being over the top and there are some downright hilarious moments. If only all British films could be as entertaining as this!"
- Martin Unsworth, Starburst
9:30 Perfect Skin (UK, 2018)
VIFF/ Vancity Theatre
Fri Mar 29: Hard Brexit UK double bill
9:30 Perfect Skin (UK, 2018)
*Canadian premieres, filmmakers attending
A young Polish woman’s relationship with a mysterious tattoo artist takes a sinister turn as she becomes increasingly fascinated by him.
"Perfect Skin is a taut horror that will have you on the edge of your seat, and quite possibly begging for mercy… a truly chilling watch and a promising debut. Perfect Skin is an engaging and horrifying film that will draw you in and refuse to let you go."
Pip Ellwood-Hughes
5:30 A Mata Negra (The Black Forest) (Brazil, 2018)
VIFF / Vancity Theatre
Sat Mar 30: Welcome to the Jungle
5:30 A Mata Negra (The Black Forest) (2018, Brazil)
*North American premiere
In a forest in the heart of Brazil, a girl sees her life - and everyone around her - change terribly, when she finds the Lost Book of Cypriano, whose Dark Magic, besides bestowing power and wealth on its possessor, is able to liberate a terrible evil upon the earth.
9:30 Amazon Hot Box (USA, 2018 )
VIFF / Vancity Theatre
Badass V: Sat Mar 30: Welcome to the Jungle
9:30 Amazon Hot Box (2018, USA)
with select cast and crew
Presented by star Tristan Risk and producer David Aboussafy
An innocent college student is tossed into a jungle hellhole where she must fight for her life against an evil wardress, psycho inmates, voodoo experiments and the incredible torture machine.
“Genre fans are always bitching that nothing original ever comes out, here is your chance to see something new and original! This film is chocked of gals, guns and pure excitement... Believe me, there is nothing out there like Amazon Hot Box and there never will be. This is pure fun made for the movie going audience that rarely gets this kind of treat. Its blend of humor and sleaze is both exciting and charming… don’t miss your chance to see your favorite movie of the year” - Blaine McLaren
http://farsightedblog.com/2018/07/02/jimmy-bickert-returns-amazon-hot-box/
3pm The Hollow Child (Canada, 2018)
The Rio Theatre
Sun Mar 31: Home of the Brave
3pm The Hollow Child (2018, Canada) 92mins with director, cast and crew
Doors 3:10 pm | Movie 3:30 pm *Please arrive on time!
Advance tickets $10.50 | $12.50 at the door
*Must be 19+ w/ID for entry and bar service. Sorry, Rio Theatre Groupons and passes not accepted for this event.
THE HOLLOW CHILD (Jeremy Lutter / 92 mins) A troubled foster teen works to expose a dangerous supernatural impostor in her new family and rescue her foster sister.
“A confident, multi-layered film which makes highly effective use of simple cinematic techniques to forge a connection with the primal.” (J. Kermode, Eye for Film UK)
5pm Knuckleball (Canada, 2018)
The Rio Theatre Badass V:
Sun Mar 31: Home of the Brave
5pm Knuckleball (2018, Canada)
with director
Knuckleball stars Michael Ironside (Starship Troopers, Scanners, Turbo Kid) and Turbo Kid Munro Chambers. “Helmer Michael Peterson effectively earns suspension of disbelief with stark atmospherics, solid performances and a persuasive escalation of panic.” D. Harvey, Variety.
10:30pm A.M.I. (Canada, 2019)
The Rio Theatre Badass V:
Sun Mar 31: Home of the Brave
10:30pm A.M.I. (2019, Canada)
world premier
A seventeen year old girl forms a co-dependent relationship with an artificial intelligence on her phone and goes on a murderous rampage. AMI stars Debs Howard (The Evil in Us) and Philip Granger (Woodland, Ghost Wars, The Killing, Tucker and Dale vs Evil)
Taking Tiger Mountain Revisited
Steaming live for the duration of the festival
In a dystopian future, American draft dodger Billy Hampton, 19, is brainwashed and programmed by militant feminists to assassinate the Welsh minister of prostitution. Lurching unwittingly toward his goal, he makes a series of furtive connections with societal outliers like himself, including a feral child, a gentle prostitute, a sadomasochistic delinquent, a lovelorn androgyne, a hippie dope dealer, and a mute nymphomaniac, while fending off predators who would sell him into sex slavery. Eventually, he is forced to focus on his mission and face the dreadful dilemma tormenting his psyche: to kill or not to kill.
Director Statement
In 1975, Kent Smith, 29, and Bill Paxton, 19, produced approximately half of a feature film in Wales with an amateur cast and crew and a $20,000 budget. The script by Smith was based on the 1973 kidnapping of John Paul Getty III. Their stash of 35mm B&W negative was comprised of “short ends” from Bob Fosse’s Lenny. Their camera was an old Arriflex adapted for Techniscope, a wide screen format which required half as much stock as Cinemascope.
They intended to shoot in Morocco, as dictated by the script, which was influenced by the work of William Burroughs, complete with illegal drugs, polymorphous perversity, international intrigue, and existential paranoia.
The duo flew to Spain, where they rented a car and ferried across the Mediterranean to Tangiers, where they were arrested for attempting to make a movie without government sanction. Kent secured their release with a bribe.
Back in Spain, Bill remembered he had friends in Wales on whom he could rely. They spent the next six weeks in Wales casting and crewing, adapting the script to fit the locale, and running and gunning.
Influenced by Italian cinema, they recorded no sound on set, intending to dub the dialogue with professional voice actors in Hollywood. After money ran out, they returned to LA, where I was privileged to see all ten hours of their dailies. Kent attempted for several years to raise finishing funds to no avail.
Four years later in my last year of film school at UT Austin, I persuaded Kent to lease me the footage, from which I culled 60 minutes of provocative footage. After assembling a small team of students, faculty, and local professionals, we rewrote the story setting it in a dystopian future, adding themes of militant feminism, geo-political upheaval, and mind control. New scenes were shot, and the sound was built from scratch.
The influence of William Burroughs grew more pronounced, to which I added the counterbalance of Valerie Solanas, author of The S.C.U.M. Manifesto. (SCUM stands for the Society for Cutting Up Men.) From Burroughs, I secured the use of text from his novella Blade Runner (a movie), which was worked into the script.
Completed in 1983, Taking Tiger Mountain was briefly distributed by Horizon Films and exhibited In the US by the Landmark theater chain. Despite some positive reviews, the critical consensus judged it a noble experiment with bits of brilliance, fatally flawed, its back-story more interesting than the film itself. My inner critic aligned with the naysayers. However, through the decades, I held the belief that there was a good movie longing to be born from the source material.
In 2016, Etiquette Pictures acquired the digital rights and transferred the Techniscope original to 4K. This inspired me to revisit the project with the aim of creating a version that was as good as the story behind its making. To the extent that was achieved, the film warrants consideration as a new entity. - Tom Huckabee, 9/14/18, Fort Worth, TX.
Visit our LIVE stream on the 29th to watch this film.