Jeff Frumess is a micro-budget filmmaker with a number of shorts and a couple of finished features under his belt, who might not have had his big breakthrough yet, but that didn's diminish his enthusiasm that kept him making movies for 20 years - evenif there were a few soul-crushing moments along his journey, like when he got fired from the corporate job he hated just when he prepared for his first feature film Romeo's Distress and really could have used the income, or when after shooting 18% of shooting his second feature Wash Away the Covid pandemic with its lockdowns struck and put an immediate end to the shoot to never be resumed - which hit Frumess doubly as it was the last footage he ever shot of his grandma Renee Mandel, who gracefully agreed to be in it and who has since died. Ultimately Frumess had the idea to retro-engineer his script into a new movie, a sort-of sequel Gouge Away, that eventually was offered an invitation fo play at GenreBlast - if only it could be finished on time.

Of course, in a way Kuyashii Gonzo: Blood Visons and Chaos Magic is a very individual documentary, only underlined by the fact that it's made of many self-videoed clips Frumess has made of himself over the years, some for his YouTube channel, as well as plenty of BTS-footage, which all give the film a very intimate feel. At the same time though, everyone who has ever dabbled in filmmaking (or the arts in general) will see himself in at least some of Frumess's experiences, as amid all the madness that happens in and around his movies, this documentary also tells from frustrations over the corporate world to self-doubts, from on-set accidents to looming deadlines, all of which makes this a movie that should reallly strike a chord with any audiences with art affinities and probably beyond.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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