From October 19th to 23rd, LUFF (Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival) will blow out 15 candles in its hometown of Lausanne! This year’s visuals, designed with the help of creative children, ridicule this anniversary year. An opportunity for LUFF to reaffirm its taste for irreverence in a spirit of teenage rebellion. Its new identity now uncovered, LUFF is also revealing the first names of its massive programme: film, music, exhibitions, performances, and workshops will take place in eight locations around Lausanne for a 15th edition placed under the sign of boldness and independence.
Film
The Swiss Film Archive premises will once again host 4 international competitions: feature films, short films (fiction, animation, experimental, and documentary), along with 10 exclusive programmes, that exhales scents of sweat and warm beer.
Danny Plotnick, for starters, the nasty kid of the eighties, whose indie movies appeared to be racy declarations of love to the punk culture. An ace in the category of inventiveness, he mastered the art of Super 8 film. His aesthetic comes close to the quality of 16mm and he uses the technical limitations of his material as infinite creative opportunities.
The animated universe of Phil Mulloy, populated by monochromatic and human shaped characters with robotic voices, will be honored. This award-winning artist will present his brutal animations, alongside his cynical discourse, that disperse, one frame after the other, acerbic irony towards our reality.
This edition will also be part of the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the F.I.N.A.L.E foundation, through the multidisciplinary project éros indéfiniment. Dedicated to the collection of documents inspired by erotica, the foundation will present a movie programme that would love to spend part of the night together with you. Aside from that, a programme will celebrate the ephemeral muse of ’70s Swedish erotica Christina Lindberg.
Finally, a programme focusing on director Wakefield Poole will bring a touch of pornochic. Known for his sex-positive discourse in the ’70s, Poole attracted a rather eclectic audience, breaking away from the prevailing gay porn at the time. Sexual hedonism is the keyword of these documents which pervaded the American gay scene and far beyond.
Music
This 15th edition will put emphasis on renowned experimental artists as much as emerging noise scenes. From experts of sonic manipulation to quirky rock stars straight from Japan, it’s in these kinds of contrasts, or even total oppositions, that the four concert nights of LUFF will be experienced.
The Quartet project, in collaboration with the 102 of Grenoble and Densités Festival, is at the heart of this programme. Composed of the two misfits forming Back Packers named John Hegre and Jean-Philippe Gross, alongside two wacky film manipulators, Xavier Quérel and Greg Pope, this collaboration will provoke a collision between noise and light for a brutal experience, a symbol of 15 editions of the festival. The bodies of both the audience and the artists will be present in vibrations.
The experimental scene will once again affirm itself with rare collaborations: the founder of the Japanese offshoot of the avant-garde movement Fluxus, Yasunao Tone, and the famous electro-acoustic musician Florian Hecker, will present a new version of their project Palimpsest. Gregory Whitehead’s radio plays will be at the center of a book published by Rip On/Off publications. And of course, many experts in the creation of acoustic spaces, both strange and pleasurable, will deliver their magic: the pillar of the LA underground scene Joseph Hammer, but also Graham Lambkin, Stefan Roigk, Altar of Flies & Blodvite.
LUFF will open its stage to the king of ambient H.J. Roedelius, a collaborator of Brian Eno and founder of the group Cluster, in a live performance that will confuse our perception of space and time.
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The festival’s DNA is made of a gene that endlessly seeks things beyond its borders. This year again, faithful Japan will be delivering some odd stuff. From the folk noise of Government Alpha and Daisuke Ichiba’s project Hedoromeruhen, literally “sludgy fairytale”, to the superstars in black perfectos Guitar Wolf and the newcomers of scum music, analsticks.
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Closer to us, the gems of the emerging French speaking scene will make the journey: Madame Patate will unpack her instrumentarium in a duo with Klimperei from Lyon, Mariachi will shake the audience using scraps of metal on her guitar, setting the stage for the wild electronica-punk of Schlaasss.
Electronic music will once again dress up in black. JK Flesh, a member of the metal band Godflesh and signed to the Electric Deluxe label, will play his distinct dub that seems to emerge straight from an illegal basement party. The electro-acoustic composer Lee Fraser will give us a lesson in distorted acousmatics while the infrabass of master Mats Lindström’s audiovisual installation will resonate with the light of neon tubes. Finally, the whiz kid Gábor Lázár, highly acclaimed after his collaboration with Mark Fell, will wrap up rattling the salle des fêtes with synthetic sounds.
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This year again, L’OFF will bring its share of weirdness and beauty. This entirely free programme will lurk around the festival, while light will be shed on 15 years of cinematographic, acoustic and visual archives through a gigantic installation nested in the Casino de Montbenon. And last but not least, LUFF will be extending an unfamiliar tentacle towards l’espace Saint-Martin for a brand new collaboration. To be continued…
LUFF Festival
Wednesday, 19th October – Sunday, 23rd October 2016 | Wednesday, 14:00 – Sunday, 12:00 CET
various locations | Lausanne, Switzerland
