Richard Wolstencroft
| Richard Wolstencroft | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Richard David Wolstencroft 23 April 1969 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Education | La Trobe University, Ivanhoe Grammar School |
| Notable work | 'Pearls Before Swine' |
Richard Wolstencroft (born 23 April 1969, a.k.a. Richard Masters) is an Australian filmmaker, film festival director, former nightclub promoter and screenwriter. He is the founder and director of the Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF), and the 17th edition will be presented in September 2016.
The son of David William Wolstencroft, he grew up in Lower Templestowe, a middle-class suburb of Melbourne, and attended Templestowe Heights Primary School, followed by Ivanhoe Grammar School. Wolstencroft began making short films at age 11 in 1980, starting with clay and action figure animation. He was given a home video camera around 1982 and started shooting low fidelity short films.
Around 1984, he met mentor Mark Savage at a Super 8 film group and together they made the low-budget zombie short film "Undead", with Savage directing and Wolstencroft starring. He then co-produced and acted in Savage's Marauders in 1986, one of the first video feature films ever made in Australia.
Wolstencroft co-directed his first feature Bloodlust with collaborator Jon Hewitt in 1990 which went on to become a cult hit and has recently been featured in Michael Adams book "Showgirls, Teen Wolves and Astro Zombies". Adams points out that Bloodlust had many of the same obsessions as the oeuvre of Quentin Tarantino and he notes it was released 2 years before Reservoir Dogs. Adams acted in the film as "Stoned Hippie."
In 1992 Wolstencroft founded the Hellfire Club, a BDSM-themed nightclub that operated in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and other states for many years. In 1996 he began work on his second feature film Pearls Before Swine, a project completed over three years and starring Boyd Rice. In 2000, the film was submitted to the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), but was not selected. In response, Wolstencroft founded MUFF and, as of 2013, the festival has remained an annual event.
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