Movie Blog: Minneapolis Underground Film Festival

Local and international film makers are headed to Minneapolis over the next few days to show off their pride projects and try to take home a title.

The Minneapolis Underground Film Festival -- or M.U.F.F. if you prefer-- kicks off on Thursday.

If you're looking for local premieres of high profile fest-circuit films like All is Lost, 12 Years a Slave or Nebraska, you'd best search somewhere else. Titles in this diverse, funky lineup: Citizen 'Caine, DIscopath, The Demon's Rook, and Angst, Piss & S***.

Locally-made features, international horror, weird science, mondo trasho, shorts you'll salute, music videos, and a thriller "inspired by" an episode of Law & Order, with all the kids' parts played by adults and all the adults' parts played by kids.

And of course, Le Gorilla.

Festival director Mark Hanson dropped into the WCCO Morning Show on Wednesday to preview the event.

"Underground films are the innovative films, they're cutting edge, they highlight subcultures," he said. "Those are the kinds of films we're looking for. You're going to see everything at our festival."

Hanson explained that the reason the festival is branded with Le Gorilla is that it ties in with the concept of "guerrilla filmmaking." The gorilla's headband is emblazoned with the logo for Channel Z, which some will recognize as a pioneering Los Angeles station that many credit for expanding the horizons of cinephilia in the early 1980s.

To get your tickets to the festival, just head to the St. Anthony Main Theatre website. The festival runs through Saturday. General admission tickets are $9, though seniors, and students get discounts.

(Note: If you look closely at the full program of scheduled events, you may spot one or two WCCO names among the film producers. Congrats to Adam Estrem and Sean Skinner!)