Page 28 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

killer. What makes Perks' chapter particularly interesting is the way in which it reveals Buttgereit as
reflecting and re-framing his thoughts around his own films on the basis of having read Linnie Blake's
theoretical interventions. Thus, the second interview conducted with the director (after he has digested
the 'Jörg Buttgereit's Nekromantiks: Things to do in Germany with the Dead' article contained in this
volume), leads him to adopt a far more elaborate and reflective account of the personal and cultural
influences underpinning his work. Here, Perks manages to tease out the links between Buttgereit's
own relationship with his father (as embodied in his early art-house short Mein Papi) and the later
deviant male figures that populate his more gruesome works. The author's interventions also provoke
some interesting comments on the links between art-house and exploitation tendencies in Buttgereit's
work, while both the director and Rodenkirchen cast light on the ability of their morbid movies to
reflect Germany's uneasy relationship with its own twentieth-century past.
Although some of the chapters have analysed the European trash text in terms of reception,
philosophy, politics and history, the section on the European Federation of the Fantastic Film Festivals
changes that. It puts exhibitors, distributors and the 'Eurotrash consuming' public at its centre. The
Federation was formed to assist with the promotion and distribution of 'difficult' European texts
that often transcend the traditional divisions of art-house and commercial productions. Enclosed in
this section is a unique insight into the forces that mould alternative European film production and
distribution in ways that greatly differ from American and mainstream versions of the 'popular'. This
section also explores the strategies that European funders and distributors use to ensure that trash and
alternative cinema receive appropriate festival coverage.
These accounts are drawn from three key member countries within the European Federation
of Fantastic Film Festivals: Belgium, Finland and Sweden. Writing from a practical point of view,
Dirk Van Extergem's chapter provides a view behind the screens of one of Europe's hidden and
(sometimes) forbidden treasures, the laid-back but highly innovative Belgian International Festival
of Fantastic Film (BIFFF). Van Extergem sketches the unique position this festival occupies within
the festival landscape, as a regionally subsidised event with far-reaching international connections. To
give an example, the Festival was in 2000 and 2001 one of the first to link into to the new wave of
extreme Asian cinema, inviting filmmakers like Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Takashi Miike when no one
had really heard of them. Earlier in its history, BIFFF had done the same for David Cronenberg (who
they invited in 1984, and whose until-then unseen Videodrome cteated a furore), while also honouring
long-time compagnons de route like Dario Argento, Brian Yuzna or Lloyd Kaufman. As Van Extergem
explains, this combination of innovation and loyalty has given the festival a specific reputation as
a cult event, attend by a cult audience which faithfully anticipates and celebrates it each year. The
participatory aspect of the cult experience is probably unique in the world; among the recurrent rites
ate massive shouting contests during screenings, and a 'human rafting' race in which film critics are
put in a rubber life boat an carried from front to back (and back) over the heads of the audience (who
have the choice to carry or drop them). BIFFF is much more than just a cult event though, and as
Van Extergem goes on to argue, its strengths and problems are not unlike those of other small-scale
niche festivals around the world.
Alongside BIFFF, another leading event associated with the European Federation is Finland's
Espoo Cine Festival, which is discussed by Tuomas Riskala's chapter, 'The Espoo Cine International

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