Hosting the first night of Weird Weekend, Matchbox Cine’s weekend of the weird, unseen, and obscure of film, is Puke, some sort of grotesque medieval clown. Despite appearances, Puke comes across as loveable and friendly without needing to say a word.
After all, some form of host is needed as Friday night is interactive cinema night. To open we have short film Goncharov, chronicling the meme of the same name where an imagined Martin Scorsese film from 1973 has its lore and context filled out by users of microblogging site Tumblr. Taking the lengths to ensure that those outside the joke believe some long-lost Scorsese film actually exists out there, the idea of an alternative history willed into existence by online users is an incredibly endearing bit of collective imagination.
The idea of the unrealised is a theme of this year’s Weird Weekend, with the surrounding décor exhibiting posters for films that never managed to spring forth into existence, from body horror maestro David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Frankenstein to Belgian arthouse director Chantal Akerman’s epic two-part The Manor and The Estate, sadly crushed by funding issues.
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Saturday saw Treasure Island, starring Nick Offerman in an early role, restored from director Scott King’s own print specially for the weekend, also joining the audience for a post-screening Q&A. It was a delight to see the recently found and restored Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers from 1972 make an appearance. It is an irreverent starring vehicle for Holly Woodlawn, a trans actor who was a player in the Warhol Superstar factory line, and is a wonderful piece of post-Stonewall John Waters-adjacent camp cinema. It was given a thoughtful and contextualising introduction from programmer and film historian Jaye Hudson, who runs the popular Instagram account TGirlsOnFilm.
Headlining the night and capping off the strong trans-centric block of programming for the day, was the first part of the epic Castration Movie, with its four-hour runtime running the gauntlet from scuzzy and abrasive to intimate and bittersweet. It abandons the filmic grand narrative, preferring to revel in small but interesting moments of a trans sex worker’s life.
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Sunday saw a host of gems screened, including a restored edit of the abandoned Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats? by weirdo music and multimedia collective The Residents. Anyone who has ever dove into the bizarre world of The Residents has found themselves in pretty deep, so its inclusion on the programme is an obvious and welcome fit of the white glove.
Also appreciated was the screening of the underrated Patrick Warburton neo-noir vehicle The Woman Chaser, with its meta-commentary on filmmaking pairing nicely with Screamplay, a black-and-white Hollywood nightmare released during the over-saturated slasher VHS craze. Seeing distribution by B-movie shlock distributor Troma and then banished to the realms of late-night European TV showings, the film became forgotten in time but has seen a revival effort by Weird Weekend, with a special recorded introduction by director Rufus Butler Seder helping to familiarise the audience to its charms.
Weird Weekend has been running since 2018, and it is now an essential event for those who dare live on the precipices of film culture, and for those looking for an alternative to countless mainstream film events. This year was no exception.
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