Horror Channel, FrightFest and Movie Mogul have teamed up again, with new partner Wildseed Studios, to create SHORTCUTS TO HELL 2, a nationwide search for new filmmaking talent ready to make their first horror feature film.
The winning filmmaker will have their film produced by Movie Mogul and Wildseed Studios, entering production early 2015, with a minimum cash production fund of £20,000. The completed feature film will receive UK digital distribution, its world premiere at Film4 FrightFest 2015, and a broadcast premiere on Horror Channel.
Launching on 13 May 2014, the jury panel (to be announced shortly) will be looking for a highly driven individual with a burning desire to make their first feature film. All entries will need to submit a 3-minute short film version of their full-length horror movie idea and their submission must clearly demonstrate the core idea, premise, story and characters in narrative form. A shortlist of twenty-six finalists will then be invited to an interview where they will have the opportunity to pitch their feature film directly to the jury panel.
Three filmmakers will then go forward to this year’s FrightFest event at the Vue West End in London, and have their 3-minute films screened before the discerning FrightFest audience. Their work will be broadcast on Horror Channel throughout August and September, where the overall winner will be chosen by public vote. The twenty-six finalists will also receive significant exposure via Horror Channel and UK digital distribution channels.
All entries will have ten weeks to turnaround their cinematic visions of hell and upload to YouTube, submitting the link to submissions@shortcutstohell.com by 6pm on 22nd July. Downloadable T&C’s from shortcutstohell.com must be adhered to.
THE RULES
• Max duration 3 minutes
• Original material (made for the competition only). Existing film promos WILL NOT be considered.
• Max production budget capped at £666 (evidence required)
• Applicants with previous feature film credits as writer/producer and/or director will not be accepted
Opening on Friday 13 June, the 13th East End Film Festival will run for 13 days until Wednesday 25 June, presenting a selection of new films from around the world as well as industry and music-focused events. One of the most exciting highlights of the festival is the screening of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s fabulous life tale The Dance of Reality, and there is a possibility that the director will be in attendance.
We are also delighted to be taking part again in a special weekend of screenings at the Masonic Temple in Liverpool Street – details to be announced shortly.
The festival opens with the world premiere of Dermaphoria, the second feature by filmmaker and DJ Ross Clarke. There will be a special focus on new Mexican cinema, co-curated by Mexican filmmaker Sebastian Hoffman, which includes excellent miminalist post-apocalyptic zombie drama The Desert.
Among other highlights we are looking forward to Sergio Caballero’s surreal heist movie The Distance, Romanian animator Anca Damian’s first live action feature A Very Unsettled Summer and rockabilly barbershop documentary Stay Greasy.
And as it enters its 13th year, EEFF will also celebrate teen films in their various ventures, including Class Enemy from Slovenia, in which students blame a new teacher for the suicide of a classmate, and White Shadow, which tells the story of a young Albino on the run from witch doctors who want to use his organs for their potions. Also screenig is Metalhead, which follows a heavy metal fanatic who performs before the cows on her family farm while dreaming of escape.
Tickets go on sale on 13 May 2014. For more information about the programme and how to book tickets please visit the EEFF website.
The Terracotta Far East Film Festival returns with a killer line-up. Running from 23 May to 1 June 2014, it starts with a spotlight on the Philippines at the ICA, including Erik Matti’s Cannes-selected crime and corruption thriller On the Job, horrific teen drama How to Disappear Completely and Andrew Leavold’s documentary on tiny Filipino superstar, The Search for Weng Weng.
We are particularly excited about Kim Ki-duk’s highly anticipated Moebius, Snow White Murder Case, the latest film by Yoshihiro Nakamura, as well as the Terror Cotta Horror All-nighter, with Takashi Miike’s Lesson of Evil, psychological thriller Killers by Kimo Stanboel and Timo Tjahjanto (who co-wrote and co-directed the ‘Safe Haven’ segment in V/H/S 2 with The Raid’s Gareth Evans), nightmarish Malaysian horror In the Dark, and Erik Matti’s macabre vampire comedy Tiktik: The Aswang Chronicles.
Encompassing a variety of genres and countries, the programme also includes thoughtful Mongolian teen tale Remote Control, spy thriller Commitment and historical saga The Face Reader from South Korea, charming tribute to 1960s Taiwanese cinema Forever Love, as well as the expected Hong Kong actioners and quirky Japanese dramas. In connection to Forever Love, there will be an exhibition of theatrical posters at the festival hub.
The next Terracotta Film Club on 21 May at the Prince Charles Cinema will serve as an appetizer for the festival’s spotlight on the Philippines with a screening of For Y’ur Height Only, which features the Filipino James Bond and shortest martial artist and superstar Weng Weng as Agent 00.
For more information and to book tickets please visit the Terracotta website.
The London International Festival of Science-Fiction and Fantastical Film returns for the 14th time with a programme packed with discoveries from Hungary to the Dominican Republic, programmes of shorts and special events including the 25th anniversary of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and animé and aliens all-nighters.
Taking place at Stratford Picturehouse and BFI Southbank, it opens on 24 April with the premiere of American psychological thriller Lost Time and closes on 4 May with spectacular French-Canadian sci-fi romance Upside Down.
We’re particularly looking forward to Suicide or Lulu and Me in a World Made for Two, inspired by Adolfo Bioy Casares’s brilliant novella The Invention of Morel, The Phoenix Project, described as ‘Primer meets Frankenstein’ and noir action thriller The Scribbler. We’re also intrigued by supernatural love story Soulmate, speculative exploration of genomics The Perfect 46, Dominican Republic thriller Wake and offbeat Belgian oddity When I Will Be Dictator.
This year, the 12th Polish Film Festival brings not only its usual bounty of new works and rare classics, but also very excitingly includes the first major UK retrospective of the work of the brilliant Walerian Borowczyk, a firm favourite at Electric Sheep. We will celebrate this very special event by making Borowczyk the focus of our next theme, starting in May, exploring his work through articles and our usual columns, including a feature by Borowczyk expert Daniel Bird, who collaborated to the retrospective.
The programme will celebrate Borowczyk’s rich and varied body of work, including his artwork, early shorts, animation and live-action features, many of which have been rarely or never seen in the UK and have been fully restored. Best known for insane erotic masterpiece The Beast, Borowczyk had started as a poster designer and acclaimed animator, producing the wonderfully inventive Angels’ Games in 1964 before moving into live-action features with the splendidly surreal The Theatre or Mr and Mrs Kabal and Goto, Island of Love.
For the first time, BFI Southbank and the ICA will be jointly holding a retrospective in partnership with KINOTEKA, running throughout May with film screenings, an exhibition, events and talks, featuring newly restored prints. In addition, the ICA will also be hosting the first UK exhibition of Borowczyk’s artwork, including preliminary work for his animated films, as well as his wooden sound sculptures. The ICA Cinema will also screen two shorts programmes including Angels’ Games.
Career Retrospective ‘Cinema of Desire, The Films of Walerian Borowczyk’ developed in collaboration with Daniel Bird, runs throughout May at BFI Southbank and the exhibition Walerian Borowczyk: The Listening Eye’ takes place at the ICA from 20 May to 29 June.
Arrow Academy’s dual format (DVD + Blu-ray) box set release of Camera Obscura: The Walerian Borowczyk Collection (released 18 August 2014) brings together key films from 1959 through to 1984.
Other highlights of the KINOTEKA festival picked from the press release include:
Pawel Pawlikowski multi-award-winning new film Ida will screen at a special centrepiece gala screening at the Barbican (24 May) ahead of its UK release later this year through Artificial Eye. Pawlikowski’s latest film is a poetic, almost Bressonian exploration of the limits of faith following the story of Anna, a young novice in rural 1960s Poland, who discovers a dark family secret on the verge of taking her vows. Exquisitely composed and shot in luminescent black and white, Ida won Best Film at the London Film Festival.
‘Sex in the Polish Socialist Republic’ is a fascinating and insightful look at sex and intimacy behind the Iron Curtain with a programme of Polish animation shorts from the Communist period, thematically linked around sex. The topic is transformed artistically and often ironically with works by leading Polish animators Julian Józef Antoniusz, Andrzej Czeczot, Piotr Dumała and Alexander Sroczyński amongst others. The screening at the Barbican (12 May) is organised in partnership with the London International Animation Festival.
Riverside Studios will showcase an exhibition of posters designed by Henryk Tomaszewski (21 April – 3 May) to mark the centenary of the birth of one of the founding fathers of the classic Polish School of Posters. Tomaszewski was known for creating expressive posters, based on visual shortcuts and metaphors, opening up a move towards greater simplicity as the foundation of his graphic language. The exhibition in London is a satellite event being held concurrently with a major exhibition of his work in Poland curated by Agnieszka Szewczyk; ‘I’ve Been Here; I Hope The Same For You’ Zachęta – National Gallery of Art in Warsaw (14 March – 10 June).
And we are particularly looking forward to KINOTEKA’S Closing Night Concert, which takes place at the Union Chapel on 30 May, described as follows:
Produced by the Barbican, the concert will premiere two short films by the Quay Brothers with live soundtrack provided by the legendary Arditti Quartet. The Gala will be the UK premiere of the Quay Brothers’ latest short film Kwartet Smyczkovy, and the critically acclaimed In Absentia, taking existing musical compositions for their inspiration. In Absentia directly responds to Stockhausen’s electronic composition Two Couples (1992/1999). The hypnotic visual language of the film and fragmented mode of narrative intensifies the associative power of the music like an additional, visual voice in the polyvocal texture. Kwartet Smyczkovy – Paraphrase on Peter Handke’s ‘The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other’ – is based on Lutosławski’s only string quartet, composed in 1964 and marks the centenary of the composer’s birth. The Quay Brothers react to the melodic superimpositions and flickering micro-rhythms of the composition with stark and eerie twilit images. The Arditti Quartet will perform these pieces live, in dialogue with the projection and will also perform Alban Berg’s Lyrische Suite, between the films, understood as an aural ‘film’ for the ears.
Alex Fitch talks to Ted Kotcheff, the director of ‘lost’ cult classic Wake in Fright (1971), and to Terry Gilliam, whose new film The Zero Theorem is released this month. Kotcheff explains how Wake in Fright was recovered by its editor, and discusses the way it depicts issues of masculinity in crisis and has an unreliable narrator. Gilliam, in an extract from a 2013 London Film Festival Q&A session, talks about how his new film responds to issues of NSA spying, continues his strand of casting actors against type, and represents a ‘full fat’ viewing experience!
Visit www.archive.org for more info + formats to stream / download.
FILM4 FRIGHTFEST IN ASSOCIATION WITH NE’ER DO WELL FILMS PRESENTS:
TURN OFF YOUR BLOODY PHONE IDENT COMPETITION
This summer, UK’s largest genre film festival Film4 FrightFest is giving up-and-coming filmmakers a chance to remind the audience of cinema etiquette and get their work shown on the big screen.
In 2012 a select group of filmmakers created a sensation in the festival with a quirky new brand of public service announcements.
In 2013, the festival recruited budding filmmakers alongside established names such as Andy Nyman, Patrick Syversen and Jacqueline Wright to encourage patrons to turn their phones off – the results were a series of amusing, sharp but always gory vignettes which continue to gather acclaim online still.
Now the festival wants to take the whole thing one step further.
Following on from the success of last year’s ‘Turn Off Your Bloody Phone’ idents, Film4 FrightFest (in association with Ne’er Do Well Films) is launching a competition to find the most inventive, crazy and funny ways of reminding the audience to not only turn their phones off during the screenings but also keep the etiquette of cinema-going alive.
To celebrate the 15th Anniversary of FrightFest, fans are encouraged to draw upon the festival’s rich, wild and varied history and create films which highlight the importance of behaving reasonably within the auditorium during the festival.
The competition is set to run between the 7th of March and the 11th August and will be judged by a prestigious jury including writer/director Sean Hogan and journalist and associate editor of Total Film Rosie Fletcher.
The five best entries as chosen by the jury will be screened at this summer’s Film4 FrightFest alongside works from some of the greatest genre directors at UK’s most prestigious genre film festival.
Birmingham’s brilliant Flatpack Film Festival returns for an eighth year for 11 days of inventive film delights, from 20 to 30 March. As always, expect a mind-stretching mix of new features, shorts and special guests, as well as avant-garde Austrian animation, a solipsistic installation, a Victorian magic lantern show, a psychedelic music night, walking tours and pop-up screenings in unexpected venues across the city.
Among the highlights:
• PHONO-CINEMA-THEATRE, the first UK screening of short films, many of them in hand-tinted colour, which were made for the 1900 Paris Exposition and featured theatre and variety stars of the day. The films include Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet and a can-can by Gabrielle Réjane; many of them have original sound thanks to an ingenious gramophone system.
• The UK premiere of THE GREAT FLOOD, a portrait of the devastation caused by the Mississippi floods of 1927 presented by experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison. Also screening are Morrison’s poetic take on archive footage of Durham miners’ lives from the 1900s to the 1970s THE MINERS’ HYMNS and his ode to cinematic decay DECASIA (we have an article on Decasia in our book, The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology, available from Strange Attractor Press).
• CAFÉ NEURO: a weekend of talks, screenings and activities that will exploit recent developments in brain-imaging and eye-tracking technology to explore what cinema does to our brains.
• JAPANIMATION: a retrospective of Japan’s offbeat DVD label Calf including work by Mirai Mizue, Tochka Collective and Atsushi Wada.
• DVD BANG, a Korean-inspired viewing lounge, where you can book in to watch a movie day or night.
Feature films include an immersive, semi-horizontal screening of Douglas Trumbull’s 70s eco-sci-fi movie SILENT RUNNING, electrifying Kathleen Hanna documentary that will make you happy to be alive THE PUNK SINGER, Haskell Wexler’s counter-culture classic MEDIUM COOL, fascinating, thoughtful UFO doc about disinformation and the creation of truth MIRAGE MEN, Ken Russell’s mind-bending ALTERED STATES, sensuous neo-gialloTHE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS, Krzysztof Zanussi’s 1970s exploration of the mind ILLUMINATION, F.W. Murnau’s classic silent horror NOSFERATU, part faux doc on East German 80s skate subculture THIS AIN’T CALIFORNIA and Eiichi Yamamoto’s amazing-sounding psychedelic animé BELLADONNA OF SADNESS, based on a French novel about medieval witchcraft.
The London Short Film Festival has just announced its programme and it’s packed with inventive and exciting events. The festival opens on January 10 with a screening of The Punk Singer (presented in association with Birds Eye View Film Festival), a documentary about radical musician and activist Kathleen Hanna, of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, who embodies many of LSFF’s ideals.
Running from January 10 to 19, the festival has expanded to 32 programmes, including their regular strands (Femmes Fantastique, Left and Luscious), to which they’ve added a Gothic and Grotesque selection to tie in with the current BFI season, Celluloid Traces, for experimental and documentary filmmakers working with film stock, and a late-night Thriller programme. Retrospectives include renowned screenwriter Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Red Riding) and animator Chris Shepherd. As always the festival has numerous music-related events, including Lisa Gunning’s new Goldfrapp video project and a Music Video Showcase playing for free in East London bars.
At Electric Sheep we are particularly looking forward to the live visual and aural remix of Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England by category-defying electro-post-rock band Teeth of the Sea, which promises to expand the psychedelic thrills of the film. The Ghost Box record label, which impressed us at the Flatpack Festival in 2010, will present one of their eerie visual and sonic shows, incorporating children’s programmes, 1960s underground animation, abstract op-art and 1970s TV to create a brilliantly hallucinatory experience. We are also intrigued by the performance of harpist and songwriter Serafina Steer in the magical Victorian surroundings of the Horniman Museum, alongside the work of animator Sam Steer.
Watch out for the Teeth of the Sea’s Film Jukebox in early January, in which the band discuss their 10 favourite films.
The festival will also feature a Straight 8 filmmaking challenge, debates and discussions, as well as industry events. Always buzzing with energy and ideas, LSFF is a terrific way to start the filmic year.
Alex Fitch talks to filmmaker Brian Yuzna about his work, from his memorable debut as producer of Stuart Gordon’s Re-animator, his underrated satire of 1980s American preppy culture, Society, and later career making sequels to several franchises, including Return of the Living Dead and Silent Night, Deadly Night. (Recorded at the University of Brighton in conjunction with this year’s Cine-Excess Festival)
Cine-Excess VII is taking place at Birmingham MAC from 15 -17 November 2013, with guests including French filmmaker Catherine Breillat (Romance, Anatomy of Hell) and Italian auteur Francesco Barilli (The Perfume of the Lady in Black, Pensione paura)
For more info and formats to stream/download, visit www.archive.org.
