New York artist Scott Cummings has nearly completed a 30 minute experimental film starring the Juggalo community of Buffalo, NY, and is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. BUFFALO JUGGALOS is not a documentary, but a collaboration between Cummings and the people he met over his six months “embedded” in the Juggalo community. The artist explains his concept for the non-traditional anti-documentary on his Kickstarter page:
The scenarios were usually planned and written by me in advance, but sometimes tweaked by the Juggalos, and of course filtered through months spent with them – their influence is everywhere in the film. In some cases scenes were proposed by the Juggalos, in some cases they are recreations of things that happened in our time together, in some cases they are what was happening at the time, in many cases they are pure fiction.
Cummings became close with the Juggalos, and the film is an attempt to capture them as they are, forgoing the mockery and judgement that is widespread in depictions of their culture, which Cumming believes will be remembered as one of the defining subcultural movements of our time.
I wanted the film to be like an artifact from a lost civilization – like finding a VHS tape on the side of the road intercut with a slasher movie, porn, Paul McCarthy’s Heidi, and backyard wrestling. Everyone in the film is a Juggalo unless noted. All non-Juggalos are Juggalo-affiliated. I would say with much confidence that it is the first film like this that has been made with Juggalos.
Now Cummings needs money to complete post-production on the film and tour it to festivals – ideally, with the Juggalos. “So they can have the experience of actually seeing the film that we made together, in a theater, with an audience,” Cummings says in his Kickstarter video. He also plans on turning the project into a photo book and zine. He’s already close to his goal, so with luck you can expect to find BUFFALO JUGGALOS in a theater near you soon.
You can follow the project’s development on the BUFFALO JUGGALOS Tumblr.
