2001 NYUFF Reviews

This was an amazing introduction to the work of underground filmmaker Vanessa Renwick, whose films on outsider behavior are emotionally penetrating.

Rejected by Don Hertzfeldt is a short underground animated film that was nominated for an Academy Award. It didn’t win, but it should have. It’s amazing.

The New York Underground Film Festival fills the void of punk rock zombie movies with Rick Spears’ Hot Trash. Plus, films by George Kuchar and his students.

Back Against the Wall is an ambitious experimental underground film by filmmaker James Fotopoulos that questions the basest concepts of narrative structure.

Satan Was a Lady by underground film legend Doris Wishman is a sleazy ode to lurid 1950s pulp paperbacks about a very bad girl trying to go good.

Plaster Caster by Jessica Everleth was one of my least anticipated films of the festival, but this engaging documentary quickly became my most beloved.

Hey Happy! by Noam Gonick is a crazy post-apocalyptic queer love story about a mentally-deficient man fending off the advances of an evil hairdresser.