By Hannah Brueske

“It’s spring; we rise again. BUFF’s back, we’re bringing hell with us. The underground is back.” — Phil Healy, co-director of the Boston Underground Film Festival

Boston Underground Film Festival co-directors Adam Van Voorhis (l) and Phil Healy (r). Photo: courtesy of the artist

For more than a decade, Phil Healy and Adam Van Voorhis have been integral parts of the all-volunteer team behind the Boston Underground Film Festival (BUFF). Their history with the event began when their own short film was selected to screen in 2011 — two years later, the creative partners volunteered to handle the festival’s technical operations. This year marks their first as co-directors.

“Like wayward boys,” Healy said of his creative partnership with Van Voorhis, which began in college. “We always get ourselves involved in these Scooby-Doo mystery-type things.”

Since the late ’90s, BUFF has celebrated vanguard, experimental, and genre cinema from around the world. Its commitment to the weird and unconventional has never wavered — and that won’t change.

“We want the audience to feel something different and get their socks blown off,” Healy said. “We want them to understand that there are other films out there that you don’t get to see… [BUFF] is kind of like reaching down and finding an ancient tomb.”

This year, the festival opens Wednesday with Ben Wheatley’s new action film Normal, starring Bob Odenkirk, who will be in attendance. There will also be a 40th-anniversary screening of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 with horror icon Bill Moseley as a guest. Japanese action choreographer Kenji Tanigaki’s Hong Kong film The Furious will close the lineup. Along with these cinematic giants, BUFF continues to spotlight regional filmmakers. Two short-film blocks, “New England Esoterica” and “The Dunwich Horrors,” will bring local genre work to area fans.

“As a nation we are very young, but New England is the heartbeat of the nation,” Healy said. “What became America starts here — a lot of its ancient fears seep out [in these films]. It’s always fun to see the visuals through the lens of people living here.”

In the week before the festival, the team is ironing out the final details — ensuring every print arrives on time, gathering volunteers, and organizing hospitality for guests and filmmakers.

Kim Baillargeon, taking on the Programming & Operations Manager role for the first time this year, first fell in love with BUFF while working as the Operations Manager at The Brattle Theatre, which hosts the festival.

“It brings in curious and passionate people,” Baillargeon said. “People who have a love for film and want to taste life and live it to the fullest. At the festival we’re all here for the same thing. We already know we’re kindred spirits.”

A scene from director Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious. Photo: Edko Films/ Zhejiang Hengdian Film Co. Ltd.

Planning for this year began at last year’s wrap-up dinner, when Healy and Van Voorhis first expressed interest in becoming BUFF’s next directors. Work accelerated over the summer, once film submissions started pouring in.

Assembling a lineup from roughly 740 submissions proved a demanding, time-consuming task for a group of about a dozen programmers and directors. Every film was watched by multiple people, and in meetings, programmers passionately advocated for their favorites. Through all the deliberations, one criterion persisted above all others: the film had to fit the BUFF vibe.

“We welcome the weird and the different,” Baillargeon said. “BUFF has been around for such a long time because it has its own flavor.” Submissions often reflect contemporary fears and anxieties. This year, many entries were critical of the rise of AI, while others explored feminist body horror (see The Cramps: A Period Piece).

Martini Bear, Michelle Malentina, Lauren Kitchen and Wicken Taylor in director Brooke H. Cellars’s The Cramps: A Period Piece. Photo: Warped Witch Cinema

Choosing the right films is like following a recipe, Healy added — though the dish has evolved over the years. “It’s an admirable festival because of the variety of representation it welcomes. I’ve been very proud to be a part of this,” he said. “Marginalized filmmakers across all spectrums have been able to show their stuff and bare themselves.” Baillargeon added that she feels proud to be part of a festival that champions cinema that might never see a studio release — films that don’t hew to the cookie-cutter formula of playing it safe.

BUFF’s audience is just as distinctive — film fans who value the unorthodox. “We’re here to watch films, absorb them, and see what they do to us,” Healy said. “Will it turn us into the Incredible Hulk? Will these gamma rays blast us and make us into this lovable crazy creature? Or enhance us? Make us grow?”

What is BUFF all about? Healy pointed to this year’s poster, featuring the festival’s mascot, the Bacchus Bunny, seen crawling out of a sewer, surrounded by stench. “To me that’s emblematic of everything,” he proclaimed. “It’s spring; we rise again. BUFF’s back, we’re bringing hell with us. The underground is back.”

Hannah Brueske is a senior journalism student at Emerson College, with a special interest in feature stories, arts reporting, and documentary filmmaking. She is active in campus publications as a projects editor for The Berkeley Beacon, Emerson’s only independent student newspaper, and the editor-in-chief of The Independent, an arts magazine that covers independent art. She just finished directing her first documentary short about the experience of transfer students and hopes to work on more documentary films soon. After graduating next December she plans to move to New York City to continue chasing and contributing to the worlds of art and culture.