What began as a bluff has grown into the best film festival in Los Angeles, powered by eclectic, unpredictable programming and faithfully enthusiastic audiences.
The 13th edition of Beyond Fest, produced in partnership with the American Cinematheque, begins Tuesday night and runs through Oct. 8, showing more than 90 features, with screenings at the Egyptian Theatre, Aero Theatre and Los Feliz 3. Opening with the U.S. premiere of Park Chan-wook’s satirical thriller “No Other Choice” and closing with the sci-fi paranoia of Yorgos Lanthimos’ new “Bugonia,” the program will also feature an expansive retrospective of 12 features by Guillermo del Toro, including the black-and-white version of his “Nightmare Alley,” with the filmmaker present for select screenings.
Part of what makes Beyond Fest so exciting is its broad-ranging programming. Though rooted in the concept of genre — which typically means a selection of gritty thrillers, horror and action — Beyond Fest pushes well past such basic concepts.
This year’s program includes legitimate prestige selections, such as Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” the Palme d’Or winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, as well as Oliver Laxe’s “Sirāt,” winner of Cannes’ jury prize. Both will have their West Coast premieres. Other high-profile titles from international festivals include Luca Guadagnino’s campus drama “After the Hunt,” Kleber Mendonça Filho’s political thriller “The Secret Agent,” Bi Gan’s trippy drama “Resurrection” and Radu Jude’s updated “Dracula.” A late addition to the festival lineup is a 70mm screening of Mona Fastvold’s “The Testament of Ann Lee,” which recently played at both Venice and Toronto.
Which is not to say the festival has forgotten its roots, with films such as Scott Derrickson’s “The Black Phone 2,” Kenji Tanigaki’s “The Furious” and Gore Verbinski’s “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” all providing dark thrills to local audiences. Also showing will be the West Coast premieres of Aziz Ansari’s “Good Fortune” and Tina Romero’s queer horror-comedy “Queens of the Dead,” the debut from the daughter of legendary director George Romero.
Past highlights of the festival include “Parasite” filmmaker Bong Joon Ho spiking a beach ball into the audience or Arnold Schwarzenegger arm-wrestling a 9-year-old boy, outrageous moments that won’t happen anywhere else.
“It’s not just all about the films — it’s about the theatrical experience, seeing it all together,” says Grant Moninger, cofounder of Beyond Fest and artistic director of the American Cinematheque. “This does not happen online. You’re not watching a screener with a watermark at your house. You’re all together, you’re just celebrating cinema and going through all the emotions together. We put on a show every year at all these theaters because we’re thankful that everyone’s coming together and we’re going to try to give them as much as we can give them.”
Potential surprises lie in wait as well. While Park’s “No Other Choice” will play the Aero on opening night, at the Egyptian will be Tom Stern’s “The Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt,” a documentary on the influential Texas psychedelic punk group. Band members Gibby Haynes, Paul Leary, King Coffey and Jeff Pinkus will be there for a Q&A moderated by Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison.
And though the Butthole Surfers have not played publicly for a number of years, there is a strong possibility they will perform as well.
“We have the band on stage and we have electricity,” said Stern, best known as co-director with Alex Winter of the 1993 cult favorite “Freaked,” during a recent phone interview. “Who knows what could happen?”
In their heyday of the 1980s and ’90s, the Butthole Surfers put on live shows that could sometimes feature two drummers, a nude female dancer, a backdrop of medical reconstructive films and the setting of various items on fire, all to support their hallucinatory, often nightmarish music.
“It felt dangerous in a beautiful way,” described Stern, placing the group and their ethos firmly within the realm of Beyond Fest.
Along with the Del Toro tribute, another retrospective highlight will be actor William Petersen appearing for Q&As after screenings of two stylish 1980s crime thrillers, Michael Mann’s “Manhunter” and William Friedkin’s “To Live and Die in L.A.”
Expect plenty of star power as well, with appearances by genre icon John Carpenter, who will present a 70mm screening of his “Big Trouble in Little China.” Al Pacino will appear for a 35th anniversary screening of Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracy” and Rob Reiner will present a double bill of Stephen King adaptations with “Stand By Me” and “Misery.” Tim Robbins will speak after screenings of Adrian Lyne’s “Jacob’s Ladder” and Robert Altman’s “The Player.”
A handful of restored horror classics will also unspool, including a new 4K restoration of Tobe Hooper’s “Salem’s Lot,” the international premiere of the 4K restoration of Abel Ferrara’s “Ms. 45,” a world premiere 4K restoration of Ruggero Deodata’s “Cannibal Holocaust” and a new restoration of Rob Zombie’s “The Devil’s Rejects.”
More than other local events, Beyond Fest harnesses the growing energy of the local rep house scene, currently in the midst of a renaissance period. Christian Parkes, cofounder of Beyond Fest, pointed to the wide-ranging tastes of younger audiences who use the online platform Letterboxd and might place Panahi and Carpenter next to each other on a shelf of Blu-rays.
“There’s a very loose seal of approval that we’re putting on this,” Parkes says. “Because the thing that’s top of mind is it’s always about the audience. Is this right for the audience? Do we want to expose them to this? Are they going to embrace it and make it their own? And that’s really critical.”
Screenings at the Los Feliz 3 are free and feature many new genre features, including the world premiere of Ned Crowley’s western “Killing Faith,” the U.S. premieres of Eric Owens’ warped thriller “In A Cold Vein,” Julie Pacino’s psychological horror “I Live Here Now” and Kenji Iwaisawa’s animated “100 Meters” and the West Coast premiere of Lucile Hadžihalilović’s fairy-tale-inspired “The Ice Tower.”
“It’s being able to give space to all these different filmmakers that we find really interesting and are saying interesting things in very new and unique ways,” said Evrim Ersoy, head of programming at Beyond Fest.
The origins of the festival go back to 2013, when Parkes, who had been a regular at the Egyptian, approached Moninger and said he could book the Italian band Goblin, known to film fans for their scoring work with director Dario Argento on films like “Suspiria” and “Deep Red,” for their first-ever L.A. shows. He had already been telling the band’s booking agent he had a venue for them in L.A.
“I walked up to Grant and I told him I had a film festival,” Parkes recalls. “And, of course, I didn’t have a film festival. I had an idea for a film festival. So I was bluffing on both sides.”
“I think some of the passion started that first year,” says Moninger. “I remember we were just going to do one year and everyone started asking, ‘What is going to be shown Year 2?’ And we were like, ‘Oh, there’s a Year 2?’”
Past editions have included tributes to David Cronenberg, Dario Argento and Sonny Chiba. A highlight of last year’s festival was a 30th anniversary screening of “Speed” with stars Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock.
Ersoy described how arranging this year’s tribute to Japanese actor Meiko Kaji, the first trip to America for the star of such cult items as “Lady Snowblood,” “Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss” and “Blind Woman’s Curse,” was a nine-month process that began when “Anora” filmmaker Sean Baker posted a picture of himself with Kaji in Japan. (Baker will be among those leading post-screening conversations with Kaji as part of her tribute.)
“No one in the team says, ‘That seems impossible,’ or ‘It’s too hard,’” says Ersoy. “We just chase every lead for anything we’re passionate about until it’s either done or there’s no way it’s happening.”
Among the titles further pushing the boundaries of what Beyond Fest can be is the West Coast premiere of Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” an anxiety-inducing examination of the psychological stresses of motherhood starring Rose Byrne that premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival.
Parkes notes that the film was among the very first to sell out when tickets for this year’s festival went on sale.
“It really comes back to what does genre mean?” says Parkes. “There’s what it meant, at a certain place and time. But why does it have to mean that today? If you look at the filmmakers and their inspirations and then the people that are watching these films, we can be a part of opening the debate. It’s always evolving.”
All of which can be summed up by the annual event’s intuitive catchphrase, “The People’s Republic of Beyond Fest,” a term often used in the festival’s promotional messaging. As the team at Beyond Fest continue to push the event in new directions, there is still a place for films like the North American premiere of a new 4K restoration of Mike Nichols’ ripe-for-rediscovery “The Day of the Dolphin,” a 1973 thriller starring George C. Scott in which dolphins are trained to carry out an assassination attempt on the president of the United States.
“Our audience is ragtag,” says Moninger, who first coined the “People’s Republic” term based on his love of obscure national anthems. “My friends text me about ‘The Day of the Dolphin’ — they don’t text me about all these other great films. So whatever the People’s Republic of Beyond Fest is, somewhere in there lives ‘The Day of the Dolphin.’”
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