Scumdance Film Festival Gleefully Celebrates Lowbrow, B-Movie Culture

Festival director George Sukara describes the films that make up the one-day program of the Scumdance Film Festival as really sleazy, really gory and really goofy. But he has a disclaimer: “I think at the core they’re made by genuinely nice people.”

For this year’s festival, he and a jury sifted through over 100 submissions of shorts and feature-length films from around the world, selecting 24 that will screen at San Francisco’s The Lost Church on Saturday, Sept. 28, starting at 3 p.m.

Obviously, this is no Sundance, as the groan-inducing festival title suggests.

Scumdance specializes in “the best (and worst) of lowbrow culture.” That means genre offerings like underground, horror, splatter, grindcore, exploitation, punk, hot-rod, rock and roll, and biker films. Tonally, the movies can range from self-knowing musical spoofs to dark horror underpinned with social commentary.

In that vein, last year, the best feature winner was Into the Shed, a 52-minute stoner horror movie made by four friends on MiniDV during the pandemic lockdown. The audience favorite short was Annihilator, about a young man obsessed with snuff films who fantasizes about starring in one.

“For the most part, the movies have very, very small budgets and they’re a total labor of love,” Sukara says. “And sometimes we’re the only festival to accept some of the movies. So it’s kind of nice to be giving people a voice regardless of how much money they have. And that’s why we haven’t changed the price.”

It costs filmmakers between $10 and $30 to submit their films to the festival, though Sukara also lists out numerous instances of fee waivers for students and international filmmakers. “I end up becoming Instagram friends with all of the filmmakers and watching their success,” he says. “It’s really exciting to see.”

This year, the festival’s eighth, he’s especially excited to show Mr. Sun, a short by former Bay Area resident Aviva Siegal, co-producer of the beloved live comedy show Talkies (now also transplanted to Los Angeles). Then there’s a documentary about legendary B-movie director Albert Pyun, who made the fantasy film The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982), the Jean-Claude Van Damme flick Cyborg (1989), and many, many straight-to-video cult classics.

Another highlight: Flavedoom 2, made by Bay Area choreographers and dancers Karla Quintero and Shareen DeRyan, who are also die-hard horror fans. “It’s really effective,” Sukara says. “I’m excited to show that, I think it’s our first dance piece that we’ve had.”

A gleeful enthusiasm for making and watching movies of all stripes presides over the entire Scumdance endeavor. Sukara, for his part, has been involved with the festival since it started in Reno in 2017. HELL!, a rock-and-roll musical comedy he co-wrote and co-directed, won the audience award for best feature at the very first Scumdance. “I loved it,” Sukara remembers. “I loved seeing all the different stuff, the really low-budget stuff.”

He became fast friends with festival founder Travis Calvert and remained involved in various capacities, jurying submissions over the years. Sukara took over from Calvert as organizer last year, when the festival moved to San Francisco. His personal experience with the festival’s capacity for camaraderie helps fuel his own enthusiasm for the event.

While not every filmmaker can make it in person to Saturday’s festival, Sukara expects a number of them (close to 10!) to be present. At the end of the seven-hour long event, the awards ceremony involves bestowing an actual trophy upon each of the winners.

“There’s no quick and easy way to pick out what’s a Scumdance movie,” Sukara explains, but of one thing he is certain: “People show up and movies get shown and people have a good time.”

The Scumdance Film Festival takes place at The Lost Church (988 Columbus Ave., San Francisco) on Saturday, Sept. 28, 3–10 p.m.