Can a film festival of bad (crappy) low-budget movies with special effects such as shooting a horror scene with a toy shark hold out and celebrate its 10th anniversary? The answer, surprising as it may seem, is yes. The Sueca International Shit Film Festival, "meeting point for the most dandy and stupid movies in the world", will celebrate its tenth edition this September. And it will do so with a budget of barely 2,000 euros -1,800 from the City Council, 200 from donations and a lot of volunteerism- and after having selected films from among more than 3,000 proposals from around the world.
The idea of creating this picturesque event came from Josep Lledó, Eugeni Alcañiz and Pura Matoses, three film-loving friends who, on more than one occasion, had traveled to the Sitges Fantastic Film Festival. There they realized that, after certain hours of the morning, the quality of the films dropped, but the laughter and laughter increased among the audience. "We wanted to transfer that experience to our town," explains Eugeni Alcañiz to La Vanguardia.
The first edition took shape as a section of the Off MIM (Mostra Internacional de Mim), a festival of recognized prestige in the capital of the Ribera Baixa. However, the CIM became independent, not without controversy, since the use of its name, which unequivocally played with the acronym of the reference event in the town, was not liked by everyone, nor was the use of the word shit. Alcañiz acknowledges pressure to change the name, but when, after the first editions, his proposal appeared on La 2 just after talking about the San Sebastián Festival, there was no doubt that it had to be kept for marketing reasons.
"There are Serie B or trash festivals in many towns in Spain, but not with the word shit," explains this CIM organizer. In addition, Alcañiz rebuts those who do not like that the word merda (shit in Valencian) is associated with Sueca, since neighboring towns usually use the phrase "Swedish, dry merda". The bet, he explains, was to turn those insults and set phrases into compliments, as ends up happening with the nicknames "to which one takes affection".
Alcañiz has no qualms about admitting that the films they show are "bad." The budget is not enough for more and that is precisely one of the hallmarks of the festival. He comments that sending proposals for his festival is free, which means that they receive many, up to 3,000 in this edition. Of course, there are many that do not respond to the genre they are looking for; there were barely 800 that met his criteria: "Make it comedy, not a drama or just a horror movie." Thus, they bet on pieces that "are badly done and that is why they make people laugh" or, as often happens, "that are done badly on purpose to provoke laughter".
One of the reasons that explains the survival of the festival, more than a decade later (there was a two-year break due to the pandemic), is that the authors, with the simple fact that their film is shown in a cinema, already gives by satisfied, and can be issued at no cost. This year, explains this promoter of the CIM, the country that has sent the most proposals has been Spain, but it stands out, in second place, the presence of films from India and, in third place, from Iran.
Precisely, this question is what allows another of the peculiarities of the show that its audience likes the most to be undertaken: subtitling short films from other countries into Valencian using local expressions that make the audience laugh. "The film is bad, the experience is not the film, it is to see it surrounded by an audience that interacts, shouts, makes loud comments and even starts to sing," says Alcañiz. For this reason, he explains that the first time someone visits the festival “he hallucinates with the experience; the movies are terrible, but you have a good time and you don't know how to explain it”.
The festival will be held between September 21 and 24 at the Bernat y Baldoví Municipal Center in Sueca, the old Cine Lido and this year it will feature a film out of competition, for whose screening the organizers have paid 200 euros (actually the has paid a businessman in exchange for being able to advertise in the middle of it). The film is Mad Heidi, by Johannes Hartmann and Sandro Klopfstein, a gory revision of the novel Heidi in which the lovable protagonist becomes a kind of Nazi hunter. "At home, alone, I'm sure you won't see it, but with friends in a relaxed atmosphere you can have a great time," sums up Alcañiz.
