‘I’ll be as homophobic as I wish’: film festival director refuses to resign
Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF) director Richard Wolstencroft has refused to step down following calls for his resignation for a homophobic rant about marriage equality.
Wolstencroft was widely condemned last year for calling the postal survey results announcement a “horrible black day of infamy”.
“The Decadence and Degeneracy of the Bourgeois Elite has been normalized and they will use this to destroy us,” he wrote.
“Homosexuality is created often through child abuse and it has been embraced by the Majority of Australians as normal.”
When his comments were passed around on Twitter many called for the festival to be fully boycotted.
Many in Australia’s film community had already strenuously avoided the festival for years given, among other things, his planning Nazi-themed dress up nights and programming a talk by a Holocaust denier.
Though Wolstencroft apologised for his comments around marriage equality and suggested he would resign at the time, he has recently stated his intention to remain at the festival’s helm, Junkee reported.
“I run the festival. How am I going to be pushed from a festival that I run?” he said on the podcast Meat Bone Express.
“I decided to make the film festival a radical free speech event. I can say anything I want,” Wolstencroft said.
“I can be as racist, homophobic, psychopathic as I wish to be. I’m tired of political correctness.”
IMPORTANT – FILM FRIENDS PLS READ. This post was made by the founder and festival director of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival. After reading this, I will, of course, no longer be supporting MUFF. I strongly encourage all of you to join me. Please spread the word. pic.twitter.com/KHYZouJgRh
— Alanah Parkin ????️???? (@AlanahParkin) November 16, 2017
“This whole atmosphere of left PC SJW thought policing is most unhealthy and totalitarian. If people do not like or approve of this, please do not enter or attend – we don’t want you,” he told Junkee.
“MUFF is going to continue with me as festival director – my apology stands as the comment was unwise. The controversy has caused a flood of MUFF entries – it’s our biggest year for entries so far, by far.”
The festival’s website states an intention to “continue our one eyed Nationalist policy” in terms of its programming and support of both guerilla filmmaking and guerilla use of the shift key.
MUFF last year screened both anti-feminist and anti-vaccination documentaries, and was at the centre of a public censorship battle in 2011 over screening Bruce LaBruce’s L.A. Zombie, which led to Wolstencroft being fined.
Like other underground film festivals in Australia, MUFF had previously programmed queer films like LaBruce’s The Raspberry Reich and attempted to screen Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, which was banned outright in Australia between 1976 and 2010.
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This guy is awesome! The United States could use more film festivals like his.
Listen to full podcast interview with RICHARD WOLSTENCROFT here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLAgdbrJO-I&feature=youtu.be
Apropos and Re this “I can be as X, Y, Z as I like” quote from the podcast for Meat Bone Express podcast/ blog at Bill Mousoulis great new Pure Shit cinema blog. I am referring to Speech in art, and I guess in life, but I do NOT support being racist, homophobic or psychopathic, etc, as a person – but within art and cinema – or public commentary and literature and such – these things may pop up or pop out. At least they can be perceived by some as such, and 100 other combinations – and I stand on behalf of free Speech and letting bad ideas – be spoken down by better ones, etc. The quote above is taken out of the Free Speech context it was meant in with in art and socio political discourse of ideas and dialectics. Listen to full interview here – does it sound that insane? Do I in this interview – JUDGE for thyself and if you don’t like don’t come – and if you do like Non PC ness and saying no to the Thought Police – do. Peace – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLAgdbrJO-I&feature=youtu.be
The point being one can make the odd non PC Comment, the odd silly comment – the odd even off the mark and wrong comment. It’s not the end of the world. This language Policing is most disturbing and Stalinist. And when someone DARES contravene the PC Thought Police – they have people who try and take their jobs, or careers and such. It’s a Neo McCarthyist nonsense and nightmare. Like Dr Jordan B Peterson I resist any attempt to enforce or regulate free speech – esp on important topics. This whole atmosphere of a left PC SJW thought policing is most unhealthy and totalitarian. It reeks of a Neo McCarthyism. The left should know better as they fought Joe McCarthy and his black listing ethos. It even takes on aspects of a Salem like Witch Hunting and even Gestapo or Stasi like tactics of labeling anyone connected to a person as guilty by complicity and demanding denouncings and such Stalinist madness. Intellectual Jordan Petersen rails against this Neo Cultural Marxist Post Modernist oppression, and now so will Muff. It’s a zeitgeist thing that is getting us MORE entries than ever before. If people do not like this or approve of it – pls do not enter or attend as we really don’t want you. Venues are secured by two libertarian friends for 2018. Announced when time is right. Muff is going to continue with me as festival director – my apology stands as the comment was unwise, hyperbolic and a silly Black Pill type post – like many lefties made on the day Trump won “the skya falling – ah”. My comment was like that and it was stupid, I admit. But this new 1984 thought policing should be fought – I say one can say what one likes – does not mean I am GOING to. I will try and be a bit more like Jordan Petersen my new idol who is very careful in his speech. I have been careless and silly at times. etc etc. Myself and Muff will add our voices to the conversation of Free Speech in it’s favour and stand against witch hunting people over an unwise comment on social media – we all make every now and then, or at least once. See the wonderful Jon Ronson below. https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_ronson_what_happens_when_online_shaming_spirals_out_of_control
The GLGTIQ Community can get around this by simply Boycotting every production, event in which this person is involved. If no-one turns up his backers will soon dump him and he will become an unusable item. This is what he deserves.
Let him say whatever he likes for that will simply add fuel to the pyre we will, figuratively burn him on.