Presented by Two Bit Movie Club, Netherworld, Feature Presentation and New Farm Cinemas, the Brisbane Only Rotoscoped Lightning Film Festival is a retrospective film festival celebrating the iconic hand-drawn lightning visual effects that were a hallmark of the weirdest and coolest science fiction and fantasy movies of the first 100 years of filmmaking.

The BORLFF program comprises a lovingly curated selection of odd and wonderful films from the 1950s through to the 1990s, each — crucially — featuring at least one scene with a hand-drawn lightning effect. Why theme a film festival around this, you ask? Well, because it rules. Obviously.

The festival will run over a two-week period as a series of themed double features, all at Brisbane’s beautiful New Farm Cinemas. Tickets are available for individual features or as a special combo deal, with a BORLFF season pass available for the true lightningheads out there who need to see every single zap.

DUNE (1984) - Friday the 29th of July at 7.30pm (8.30pm screening)

Join us for the BORLFF opening gala as we celebrate a movie that its director would rather forget, David Lynch’s Dune. Sometimes derided as a poorly thought out attempt to recapture the magic of Star Wars, this odd, very loose adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel nevertheless holds up as a display of weird and wonderful production design with a cast of David Lynch regulars and a profoundly 80s score from none other than Toto.

The evening will include a tribute to the score performed by The Steady As She Goes from 7.30pm in the foyer, with the film screening at 8.30pm. Cocktail attire is encouraged but by no means mandatory.

Each ticket comes with a Dune enamel pin designed by Luke Shield.

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986) - Saturday the 30th of July at 6pm

Strange characters wield even stranger powers as a bewildered truck driver descends into a fantastical and quite literal San Francisco underworld. A visually arresting supernatural martial arts adventure film about a mostly useless, brash man in the company of his more competent friends, Big Trouble in Little China is the poster child film for rotoscoped lightning effects.

THE LAST DRAGON (1985) - Saturday the 30th of July at 8.30pm

The product of the narrow band of time in which having one of your main characters be a “video jockey” not only made sense but seemed quite cool, The Last Dragon is an exquisitely and quite proudly ridiculous martial arts movie about two competing New York City martial artists, one a young fan of Bruce Lee, the other the megalomaniacal self-styled Shogun of Harlem.

FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) - Sunday the 31st of July at 6pm

Prepare yourself to grapple with the impossible as Forbidden Planet confronts you with a Leslie Nielsen before he went grey and telling approximately zero jokes. Stunning matte paintings, beautiful rotoscope animation, and some very 1950s sexism await you in the far, exotic future of the 23rd century.

INVASION OF ASTRO-MONSTER (1965) - Sunday the 31st of July at 8.30pm

An illuminating cautionary tale about the dangers of lending your Godzilla and your Rodan to your supposedly friendly alien neighbours, in the hope of curing their King Ghidorah problem. Invasion of Astro-Monster has all the quality hallmarks of a Showa-era Godzilla movie: Meticulous miniature work, stunning special effects, thrilling man-in-a-big-suit combat, and a completely baffling plot confected to facilitate the previous things in this list.

ADDAMS FAMILY DOUBLE FEATURE (1991/1993) - Friday the 5th of August at 8pm

The only thing better than one 1990s Barry Sonnenfeld Addams Family movie is two of them, so we’re doing both The Addams Family and Addams Family Values. Deeply imprinted on the brains of aspiring goth children of a specific age, this incarnation of the cartoon-turned-television family is dark, funny and, at times, disconcertingly horny — the perfect tonal combination for a series of family films.

Each ticket comes with a Wednesday Addams enamel pin designed by Luke Shield

HOWARD THE DUCK (1986) - Saturday the 6th of August at 6pm

One of the great “How and why was this made?” movies in film history. This early Marvel cinematic adaptation had a budget large enough to fully facilitate the unhinged vision of a wisecracking, lascivious duck-man hybrid bumbling his way around Earth. Did the world need to see a topless duck drinking a cocktail in the bath? Probably not, but art is supposed to challenge you.

SUPER MARIO BROS (1993) - Saturday the 6th of August at 8.30pm

The film put into canon that Mario and Luigi’s names are, respectively, Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. 1993’s Super Mario Bros puts Dennis Hopper and Bob Hoskins in a movie that is wildly divorced in its source material but extremely creative in what it decided to do instead.

LIFEFORCE (1985) - Sunday the 7th of August at 6pm

From the director of iconic horror movies The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 comes the somewhat less iconic Lifeforce. Everything seems fine when a perfectly harmless-seeming abandoned spaceship is discovered in the trail of Halley’s Comet, but somehow things go awry when the space vampires hidden aboard make their way back to Earth.

HELLRAISER (1987) - Sunday the 7th of August at 8.30pm

One of the most iconic movies about a cube ever made (after, perhaps, Cube), Hellraiser is the middle of the Venn diagram of “solving puzzles” and “BDSM”. Hellraiser presents a strange and inarguably cool vision of hell, where a bunch of weird all-powerful goths explore the far limits of pleasure and pain mostly through ripping people apart with magical meathooks.

THE ART SHOW

Feature Presentation will curate an art show with interpretations of select festival films by a group of local and international artists. Each poster will be in the classic Australian daybill format and will be on display at New Farm Cinemas throughout the festival. Prints of the posters will be available to purchase online and in the lobby.

Feature Presentation - https://www.instagram.com/feat...

The Artists:

Tom Williams - https://twitter.com/TimboTheChamp

Goran Gligovic - https://twitter.com/GoranGligovic

Luis Mela - https://twitter.com/ReptileEnclosed

Rhea/Young Earl Grey - https://www.instagram.com/youngearlgrey/?hl=en

Sam McKenzie - https://twitter.com/ohnosam

Ashley Ronning - https://www.instagram.com/ashleyronning/?hl=en

TWO BIT MOVIE CLUB

Two Bit Movie Club hosts movie events at Netherworld in Fortitude Valley, the Scratch Bar in Milton, and at cinemas across Brisbane. We screen movies we think are very bad, we screen movies we think are very good, and we screen curated collections of weirdness ranging from old archival footage to trashy Australian TV.

Netherworld

Feature Presentation

Luke Shield

The Steady As She Goes

Five Star Cinemas

Contact the host of BORLFF - Brisbane Only Rotoscoped Lightning Film Festival