WHAT THE FILM FEST is Toronto's premiere showcase of eccentric cinema. Hosted by THE LASER BLAST FILM SOCIETY, it annually champions outlier and outsider films that intersect definitions of both genre and avant-garde cinema and operate outside the traditional parameters of taste and convention.

Tickets to individual screenings are $10 at the door, or you can purchase an advanced all-access wrist-band to see the entire programme for $20!

4:30 PM - BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL

7:00 PM - SYLVIO

9:30 PM - SHES ALLERGIC TO CATS

Read more about each film below:

4:30 PM

BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL

Dir. Shinichi Fukazawa

Cast: Shinichi Fukazawa, Masaaki Kai, Asako Nosaka

Japan / 2014 / 62 min / CANADIAN PREMIERE

First and only time writer/director/actor/editor/cinematographer/special effects creator Shinichi Fukazawas deliriously named film is a winking homage to Sam Raimis THE EVIL DEAD, transplanting the story of hapless folks getting besieged by anarchic evil spirits from a cabin in the woods to a traditional and claustrophobic Japanese home. Unfortunately for the vengeful ghosts, one of the hapless aint so helpless, as they happen to be the titular BODY BUILDER portrayed by the director himself, and have brought along some barbells to this spook-a-blast brawl. Shot on grimy Super 8 in 1995, but only completed and released in 2014, Fukazawa impressively distills his love supernatural splatter to a lean 62 minutes, while colliding a familiar barrage of low-fi gore, stop-motion monsters, and verbatim Evil Dead one-liners without ever feeling like a rehash. In era of remakes and reboots, it is the rare cover that remixes its source into something fresh and surprising; a treasure of a cult film that desperately deserves an audience so that it can swallow their souls.

7:00 PM

SYLVIO

Dir. Kentucker Audley, Albert Birney

Cast: Sylvio Bernardi, Kentucker Audley, Albert Birney

USA / 2017 / 80 min / CANADIAN PREMIERE

OFFICIAL SELECTION, SXSW 2017

A downtrodden debt collector named Sylvio Bernardi becomes an overnight celebrity after he trips and inadvertently smashes up the set of a public-access television show in the middle of a broadcast to the delight of its audience. Recognizing the audiences hunger to see more comical wanton destruction, the shows producer and host Kentucker Audley invites him to be a regular guest. Sylvio accepts the opportunity, but only in the hope that this platform will permit him to expose the world to his true passion: performing micro-narratives with a hand-puppet of a balding middle-aged man named Herbert Herpels. Oh, and Sylvio is a gorilla that wears sunglasses; did I not mention that? Based on a popular VINE channel that chronicled the banal struggle of a working-class primate across 814 six-second clips, SYLVIO conjures up an absurd, but legitimately heartwarming and coherent satire and idiosyncratic character study that remarkably transcends its humble social media origins.

9:30 PM

SHES ALLERGIC TO CATS

Dir. Michael Reich

Cast: Mike Pinkney, Sonja Kinski, Flula Borg,

USA / 2016 / 82 min / TORONTO PREMEIRE

OFFICIAL SELECTION, FANTASIA 2016

When a dog groomer Mike Pinkey who aspires to be recognized in Hollywood for his avant-garde video art asks out the girl of his dreams Sonja Kinski, granddaughter of Klaus and she accepts, he panics at the thought of inviting her over to his rat infested apartment. His anxiety leads him to illicitly procure a cat to help rid his apartment of the vermin but oh god the title of this movie THIS WILL NOT END WELL! Funded entirely by working as a body double for one of the DAFT PUNK robots, Michael Reichs incredible debut feature is a Linklater meet-cute soaked in an experimental VHS aesthetic that gradually escalates into a full-on Lynchian fever dream that dares to call out the disturbing nature of William Huycks HOWARD THE DARK and make a DVD copy of Frank Marshalls CONGO look devastatingly sexy. FILMMAKER MICHAEL REICH WILL BE IN ATTENDANCE!

EACH FEATURE WILL BE PRECEDED BY SHORT FILMS AND MORE!