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There’s still nearly a month to go, but an early sampling of this year’s Calgary Underground Film Festival lineup suggests that programmers have ticked all the boxes for fringe and genre cinema in its 19th year.

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Cool music doc? To verify. Independent film making the buzz? To verify. A documentary about an unusual subculture? To verify. Canadian cult classic? To verify. Documentary stranger than fiction? To verify. This year, the full lineup will return to cinemas, although there will also be an online component. Cameron Macgowan, CUFF’s lead programmer, said there are also plans to bring in as many filmmakers as possible for in-theatre screenings and Q&As.

We asked Macgowan to give us a sneak peek at this year’s lineup, which will screen April 21 through May 1 at Globe Cinema.

Cool Music Documentary

Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr. by Philipp Virus is a tribute to the influential grunge band. Virus, aka Philipp Reichenheim, explores both the act’s career as former statesmen of the American underground and the friendship within its ranks with the help of some rare performance footage.

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“The group is known to be quite reclusive,” Macgowan says. “With Freakscene, they were able to understand what makes Dinosaur Jr. so enigmatic and brilliant, but also how this laid-back character has helped them stay together over the years, just to do as they please without ever having to to play. the public relations game.

Buzzing independent film

CUFF will also present Down with the King, Diego Ongaro’s drama about a famous rapper who escapes to a small farming community to rediscover himself. The film, which features MC Freddie Gibbs in his debut, received strong reviews on the festival circuit with critics saying that Ongaro avoids a goofy fish out of water, a rapper on the farm and instead offers a poignant drama.

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A documentary about an unusual subculture

A Wicked Eden, by Calgary filmmaker Naddine Maddell, delves into the community of online fetish porn creators, focusing on an elite dominatrix from the American Midwest named the goddess Alexandra Snow. Maddell followed Snow as she took on a new protege in the world of online fetish content creation.

“It’s a beautiful local documentary that takes a very empathetic and honest look at the kink community, specifically the BDSM dominatrix community,” Macgowan says. “I know this has been a passion project of Naddine for a very long time and just came out of its Whistler premiere so we’re really excited to bring it home.”

A documentary stranger than fiction

CUFF has a long relationship with Joe Prickett and Nick Prueher of the Found Footage Festival. They produced the eccentric documentary A Life on The Farm by filmmaker Oscar Harding, who inherited an amateur feature from his grandfather about neighbor and foreign artist Charles Carson.

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“It starts out as a cute, quaint documentary about farm life from the perspective of the farmer recording it and it quickly evolves into an almost documentary version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre without the murder,” Macgowan explains.

“There’s no murder, but it gets very dark but maintains a comedic tone throughout.”

Canadian cult classic

As part of National Canadian Film Day, CUFF will once again be teaming up with Reel Canada on April 20 for a free screening of a Canadian classic. This year, the spotlight is on Indigenous films. In Calgary, there will be a screening of the 2013 horror drama Rhymes for Young Ghouls by Mi’qmaw filmmaker Jeff Barnaby. The film may be nearly ten years old, but it couldn’t be more timely.

“It’s a horror movie about the residential school system,” Macgowan says.

The Calgary Underground Film Festival runs from April 21 to May 1 at the Globe Cinema. The National Canadian Film Day screening of Rhymes for Young Ghouls will take place at Canyon Meadows.