by Marcy Dermansky

Do you ever start to worry that Indie film has gone the way of alternative rock? Embraced by corporate America, feted at Sundance, packaged by distributors into slick, shiny packages?

Don't worry. You're not alone. The NY Underground Film Festival shares your concern. The 8th Annual NY Underground film festival will unspool thirteen features, seven feature-length documentaries, and more than 100 shorts at the Anthology Film Archives from March 7 to March 3.

The NYUFF programming staff screen a record number of almost 1500 submissions to create one of its largest and most ambitious lineups to date. The line up is also its most international, with films and videos from fourteen countries outside the US, including Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cub, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and Russia.

More of this Feature • Part 2: More Premieres Than Ever Before

Join the Discussion Do You Like Underground Films?

From Other Guides • Cult Film

Elsewhere on the Web • NYUFF Official Site

The NY Underground exists to support the outer fringes of independent cinema. The first and oldest of the now-established pack of "upstart fest," the NYUFF continues to forge its own unique path, maintaining its success as a destination of choice for truly visionary filmmakers who battle increasingly sterile commercial expectations.

"A festival that was more international, more challenging, and even less mainstream in scope were our main goals in curating this year," says festival director Ed Halter. "It came about in part from our absolute boredom with the failed 90's projects of Sundance, which tries to mix celebrity big business, and art with such disappointing, compromised results."

Opening Night presents the East Coast premier of Noam Gonick's Hey, Happy!, an apocalyptic queer prairie love story, shot in luscious cinemascope, and set in the magical land of Winnipeg, Canada. Gonick, best known for his documentary Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight, premiered Hey Happy!, his first feature film, at the Midnight section of Sundance 2001.

Artist Cecilia Dougherty presents the world premiere of her latest work, the double-screen projection Gone, on Closing Night. In part a re-staging of an episode from the groundbreaking 1970s PBS documentary series "The Loud Family," Gone stars writer Laurie Weeks and painter Amy Stillman, with music by alt-rock favorites Le Tigre and a soundtrack composed by the bands Johanna Fatman.

Next page > More Premieres Than Ever > Page 2

Previous Articles