Backseat: Film festival for the rest of us

 

 

PREVIEW. Backseat Film Festival was made for Philly: The tickets are cheap, the beer is free, and even the jackasses from “Jackass” are invited. 

  Now in its seventh year, Backseat describes itself as a “rock-and-roll film fest,” giving experimental, independent, and fun-loving films a venue. This year’s program includes 14 features and more than 50 shorts and music videos.

Backseat was the perfect venue for Bill Plympton to screen his latest work, “Idiots and Angels,” an animated dark comedy that makes its Philly premiere this Saturday. “It doesn’t have all these pompous market things like Sundance or Tribeca,” says Plympton. “It’s a festival for the audience, not the distributors or money people.”

After his 2004 animated comedy “Hair High,” starring Sarah Silverman, didn’t do as well as expected, Plympton took three years to make “Idiots,” which tells the story of a happily corrupt man who suddenly sprouts wings. Plympton skipped the dialogue, opting to let the music do the work.

“I’ve done a lot of my shorts without dialogue, and they seem to do better. I’m not sure if I’m a bad writer, or if my images are so powerful,” he jokes. “The music became the dialogue. It became an opera, or a music video.”

Also on the lineup this weekend is “Minghags,” the new film by Bam Margera and the aforementioned  “Jackass” crew, and “Blood on the Highway,” Barak Epstein’s vampire road trip flick. See — no film snobbery required.
Monica Weymouth/metro