2nd Annual New England Underground Film Festival

The New England Underground Film Festival, a celebration of the best of underground cinema, will have its second annual presentation on October 7 at La Paloma Sabanera, a café and visual arts venue in Hartford, Connecticut. The event will be held from 12:00pm to 6:00pm; general admission is $10 and students with school ID can pay $5.  

The New England Underground Film Festival will offer a line-up of provocative short films and feature-length productions. Among the highlights in this year’s festival are the following:  

• The first New England screening of Rudyard Kipling’s Mark of the Beast by Connecticut filmmakers Thomas Edward Seymour and Jonathan Gorman, starring Ellen Muth of Showtime’s Dead Like Me and B-movie icon Debbie Rochon;
• The festival premiere of Checkmate by 13-year-old Connecticut filmmaker Daniel Kuriakose;
• A rare screening of the 1914 silent fantasy His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz – the only Oz story written exclusively for the screen by L. Frank Baum, who also produced this once-lost film;
• A digitally restored version of Michael Legge’s 1988 underground comedy classic Working Stiffs, which was shot in glorious Super 8mm on a $1,000 budget;
• Eugene Ioannou’s award-winning Off Season starring bodybuilding champion Robert Youells;
• The East Coast premieres of a pair of Australian shorts – Craig Foster’s Parrot and Luke McKay’s Hit and Run; and
• The festival premiere of Spirit First, Connecticut filmmaker Ryan Ondriezek’s documentary on folk rocker Levi Weaver.

La Paloma Sabanera is located at 405 Capitol Avenue in Hartford, Conn.; the telephone number is (860) 548-1670 and the website is http://www.lapalomacoffeehouse.com.

The full festival schedule is available online at http://newenglanduff.webs.com/.