Hey folks, what's in my special episode at the projection booth? I'm your host, Mike White. On this

episode, I'm talking with Kevin Monaghan and Nicole McControversy all about the Boston Underground

Film Festival. It is currently going on, you guessed it, in Boston. Check out Bostonunderground.org.

For more details, and be sure to check out the festival. They were showing some great stuff.

There used to be a lot of underground film festivals in the world, but I think you in Chicago,

you might be the last one standing.

We might be actually. Yeah. It was founded by David Kleiler in 1999, who was considered

the elder statesman of new, like, film in New England and

independent cinema. And then just like over the years, he brought on new staff. And I came

on board in like 2008. And Kevin had been on board like maybe a year or two before me. And we've

just been fully in charge of the festivals since 2012.

What is an underground festival? You know, I love trying to answer that question, because I think

it's just a very relative term to where you are and what would be considered underground in

the context of where you are. So festivals, like, there used to be a New York Underground Festival, and they were very experimental, like super experimental filmmaking.

Chicago kind of has that vibe and lots of cool, weird, indie stuff. Those were our origins, but then over the years, we've kind of been leaning more towards a lot of global genre cinema.

So I feel in the context of Boston, which is a lovely place, but maybe just a little uptight.

I say that with fondness.

We tried to bring the weird here.

So for us, that's what Underground is achieving.

It's something edgy, something you wouldn't find

in Boston. Boston is like, you know, very friendly and family-oriented and sports-oriented.

And we're the weird kids who don't like sports. We have our weird film family instead

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