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Hunka Junk Film Festival Oddball collection is a pop culture time capsule
It’s a collection of instructional films, commercials and other shorts.
One of the most unusual film festivals you’ll ever see is coming to Youngstown.
Hunka Junk — a collection of film shorts, TV spots, commercials, instructional/educational films, early videos and other odds and ends — will make its first Mahoning Valley appearance Wednesday.
In a nutshell, Hunka Junk is a loving homage to the way we used to be, and not so very long ago. It ranges from unintentionally hilarious to bizarre, because when these hard-to-find cellulloid arfifacts were made, they weren’t meant to be funny. Really, they weren’t even supposed to be lasting.
It’s a snapshot of the rapidly changing world of pop culture, where something 40 years old can seem positively ancient.
The man behind Hunka Junk is Dion Conflict of Toronto, Canada, a man to whom amassing film oddities has become a labor of love for him. “I have an appreciation for what other people consider disposable,” he said in an interview with The Vindicator.
Conflict has been gathering rare film for years, scouring flea markets and other locations. “The search is almost as much fun as the exhibiting,” he said.
Now in its fourth updating, he has toured the festival throughout Europe and North America.
It has been well-received everywhere it goes, said Conflict, but perhaps nowhere better than Finland.
For some reason — can anyone explain Jerry Lewis’ popularity among the French? — the Finns have a cultural funnybone that Hunka Junk always hits. Hunka Junk 5 toured Finland last year and was seen by more than a million people, with its final screening in Helsinki selling out in 10 minutes. “The Finns have an appreciation for the finer things,” said Conflict. “I’m not sure why they are so nice to me.”
Some clips in the latest version of Hunka Junk include “You’re the Salesman,” which teaches service station workers how to sell kitschy items to unsuspecting motorists; “Light Unto All,” a strange film about mobsters directed by Sid Davis, who made the ’50s anti-homosexual instructional film “Boys Beware”; psychedelic Australian ice cream commercials; and a film on how to look prettier for your boss.
Conflict first saw the wonder in film oddities while in grade school in his working class hometown in Ontario.
“Teachers would throw on educational films instead of teaching, and when they were done, I’d wonder how I could own them,” he said. “It was the days before the Internet, and to find these films you had to search.”
He stressed that his motive has nothing to do with cynicism or sarcasm; in fact, the film-school graduate finds much of today’s big budget Hollywood fare to be empty by comparison. He calls the time-capsule films in his collection “endearing.”
The first Hunka Junk film festivals were held in the early ’90s in Toronto’s Rivoli Club, where Conflict showed a hodgepodge of instructional films he rescued from the garbage dumpster.
The festival made its way to Cleveland earlier this year, where he meet Michele McBride of Youngstown Film, the Mahoning Valley’s indie film club. McBride asked Conflict to bring Hunka Junk to Youngstown.
Those who attend the event can expect Conflict to open it with introductory remarks. Audience participation is encouraged, said Conflict, noting there’s a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” type atmosphere.
Prizes culled from thrift stores and other repositories of pop-culture kitsch are given out to attendees who correctly answer trivia questions. “You can’t get this at the multiplex,” said Conflict. “All you’ll get there is expensive popcorn.”
The single-screen festival shows a continuous string of film bits, with the longest clocking in at 15 minutes.
“It’s a film festival for channel surfers, the YouTube generation, people under the influence, those with attention deficit disorder, and anyone who just wants a good time,” said Conflict.