FAFFing About at the Nova

Acronyms are a passion of mine, so when I was informed about the Fantastic Asian Film Festival, or FAFF, I was confused. Why title your film festival after a word that means ‘to muck about’? However, after seeing a line-up filled with genre films, oddball indies and a porn musical about a woman and her fiance/water-monster (really!), FAFF seems to be titled in the best possible way.

Here are some of my picks of FAFF. My research consisted entirely of plot summaries and YouTube, so I can’t promise that they’ll be good, but I’m getting tickets for them!

DEADBALL
If FAFF was solely concerned with bringing crazy to the table, then the festival would be Deadball on a week-long loop. Some movies in the festival have machine gun arms, or sex magic. Whatever. Deadball’s about a kamikaze baseball game between death-row criminals and Nazi school-girls who are eighty percent midriff. A character smashes a baseball by swinging a dude at it. If you want crazy, Deadball‘s throwing it into your face at 200 miles an hour.

INVASION OF ALIEN BIKINI
There’s another movie at FAFF called 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy. It’s racked up massive profits and cost 3.5 million US to produce. While I’m sure that film has its…qualities, if I had to pick a weird erotica film, it’d be Invasion of Alien Bikini. It’s about a mustachioed ‘city protector’ and an alien that needs human semen to reproduce. It’s been a huge hit in the indie circuit due to its tiny budget of $5,000 USD and it looks like a lot of wacky fun. Plus, it’s called Invasion of Alien Bikini. I’d see it just to tell people that title.

GUILTY OF ROMANCE
Blending noir and character drama, Guilty of Romance is a grounded alternative to FAFF’s odder denizens. The film interweaves the stories of three women: a female detective solving a grizzly murder, a university professor and a house-wife who turns to prostitution to break up the monotony of her marriage. The film is…wait did I just call this premise ‘grounded’? Huh.

Anyway, Guilty Of Romance looks like a dramatic, heartfelt film, and Sion Sono (director of 2001’s cult hit Suicide Club) has the pedigree to fulfill the complex premise.

There isn’t space to talk about the others on my shortlist (If I have the time, I’ll be at Ninja Kids!!! and I Saw The Devil) but if any of my picks are up your alley, you’re sure to find more to see in the full lineup. Check out what’s on offer, buy your tickets, then lie back and enjoy a bit of FAFFing about.

FAFF runs from Nov 10 – 13. For schedules and tickets visit faff.com.au.