Playing Dead

 Dead Channels: The San Francisco Festival of Fantastic Film is a 10-day celebration of offbeat cinema that takes the "fantasy" genre and stretches it to incorporate not only sci-fi and horror, but also satire, postmodernism, and the downright strange. Organizer Bruce Fletcher of IndieFest fame intentionally tried to keep the festival small, so as to, as he put it, "make it completely crap free." Highlights include Bad Biology, a film from the man who brought us the Basket Case trilogy, about a woman with seven clitorises; Toomorrow, a "Hammeresque, ancient Astronaut groovy" musical starring Olivia Newton John that might actually be even better than Xanadu; Who Is KK Downey?, a film loosely based on the JT LeRoy debacle; and Jennifer Lynch's creepy FBI procedural, Surveillance, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival. On Wednesday, Shannon Lack, a member of the Living Dead Girlz zombie dance troupe and the reigning Fangoria "spooksmodel," hosts ladies' night, showcasing a series saluting several macabre shorts created by women. The event culminates on closing night with a multimedia performance by members of I Am Spoonbender.
Oct. 3-11, 8 p.m., 2008