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Lucky Film Fest call for entries

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The fabulous Lucky Film Festival is on once again in Sydney.

Lucky is open to all films, no matter what age, qualification or whether the film has been previously screened. All we ask is for them to be under 10 minutes and that there is just a hint, a whisper, a smidgen, of something lucky in it.

Submissions close on Friday 13 September, but there will be no lucky winners – only damn good winners.

The shortlist will be screened at Platform 2 in Leichhardt on 12 October.

Fortuitous prizes will include a one on one dinner with a Producer and $1,500 worth of in-kind support from The Arts Platform towards your next film venture.

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Horrormathèque screening series: The Conjuring

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Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival presents

a HORRORMATHEQUE screening of….
THE CONJURING, directed by James Wan

trailer-the-conjuring-e1362010393570

9.15 pm

Village Cinemas Hobart

Sunday 4 August 2024

Book online for a group discount rate of $13 via EventBrite here. Inquiries email info@strangerwithmyface.com

There will be social drinks prior to the screening…stay tuned for venue info… There will also be giveaways!

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Get violent with Florence… and Karen Black!

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Florence rescues a stray cat from a gang of teenagers, but after taking the feline to an isolated building, her true intentions emerge. What quickly escalates is a high-octane all claws bared battle to the death.

We got the lowdown on exciting new Australian short Violent Florence from producer, Katia Nizic. The film is written and directed by Jaime Snyder and is crowfunding right now! Katia is a recent AFTRS graduate and a film reviewer at The 500 Club. She’s based in Brisbane.

LEFT: Lead actress, Charly Thorn. RIGHT: Puppet cat-in-progress, Karen Black.

Can you talk about ‘Karen Black’ and Rachel Echols’ work in puppetry and makeup FX?

Karen Black is our puppet cat, but actually - there’ll be three of her. The level of detail needs to be different for each type of action we’re doing, so we have Wrestle Karen, Soft Karen (to attach to our lead actress’ head), and Action Karen.
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Films to catch at St Kilda

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This year’s St Kilda Film Festival is in full swing in Melbourne. Three films that screened at Stranger With My Face this year are in the line-up, and of course we wholeheartedly recommend you check them out if you weren’t able to see them in Hobart in March!

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Tonight, as part of Session 9 at the Astor, Isabel Peppard’s marvellous stop-motion animation Butterflies…

Butterflies has already screened at festivals like Sitges and the Melbourne International Film Festival and marks Isabel as a major talent to watch.

We’ve been catching glimpses of her new film, Demon Parade, on Facebook, and it looks like an even darker and weirder tale still. We can’t wait.

strangeface200x200 Then on Friday night in Session 12 you can see Lynne Vincent McCarthy’s Strange Face and Natalie James’s Tritch. Continue reading →

MEDIA RELEASE: 10 By 10 Script Challenge winners

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The awards night of the inaugural competition took place on 10 March in Hobart, Tasmania

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hobart – 12 March— The awards night for the 10 By 10 Short Script Challenge took place in Hobart last week as part of the Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival.

The Challenge gives writers 10 days to compete a short horror script. The theme this year was a quote by iconic American author Shirley Jackson:

“Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?”

The Challenge attracted entries from Australia and around the world.

The scripts were assessed by a panel of judges: genre screenwriting team SP Krause and Shayne Armstrong; horror filmmaker Ursula Dabrowsky; and television writer Vicki Madden. For more info about the 2013 judges click here. There was also a reading group, for first round judging.

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MEDIA RELEASE: 48-Hour ‘Tasploitation’ Challenge Winners

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The screening and awards night of the inaugural competition took place on 7 March in Hobart, Tasmania

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hobart – 11 March— The screening and awards night for the inaurgural 48-Hour ‘Tasploitation’ Challenge took place in Hobart last week as part of the Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival.

The Challenge asks filmmakers to make a short horror film of five minutes or less—from concept to full execution in a 48-hour period. Fourteen registered teams took on the Challenge, 11 teams from Tasmania and three from other Australian states, and all fourteen delivered films.

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Best film winner Carmen Falk with festival director Rebecca Thomson.

Filmmakers were emailed a special signature phrase (it was “spit it out”) on 8 pm Friday 8 March and they had until 8 pm on Sunday 10 March to deliver their film.

“It’s been exciting for us to see the results,” says Stranger With My Face’s Briony Kidd, “The filmmakers went all out and the standard is very high.”

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Why you too should have a festival pass

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So what’s the best way to experience the Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival 2013?

Well…bring friends and stay awake I guess.

The most economical way is definitely by grabbing one of our festival passes.

Festival_pass

It’s only $60 to go to almost everything, which means you’d be getting a good deal if you only went to 3 or 4 things.

You’ll also be showing your support for this genuinely grassroots, independent event by …drum roll….pre-booking!

I know, not very Tasmanian, is it? But, who knows, you may find you begin to enjoy it.

Once you buy your festival pass, you’ll be send a special code (not immediately, be patient) and then you can use that to book whatever sessions you want to go to. Some sessions are almost sold out already, so basically the sooner you grab your festival pass, the better deal you’re getting! Continue reading →

Lois Duncan talks SWMF

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Ever since she kindly agreed that we could name our event after one of her books, we’ve considered young adult author Lois Duncan as an informal patron of the festival.

To celebrate festival week 2013, we asked her about Stranger With My Face. And Stranger With My Face. And a few other things.

How do you feel about the festival being named after your novel?

Lois Duncan

I am thrilled and amazed to have a screen festival in Tasmania inspired by my young adult novel, Stranger with My Face. Little did I guess when I wrote my first suspense novel, back in the early 1960s, that I was helping to launch a genre that would become increasingly popular in years to come! Women and girls were not supposed to be attracted to such subject matter, yet when you stop to think about it, there are far more witches in fairy tales than there are ogres. A woman’s dark side can be more frightening than a man’s, because it’s so often hidden behind a mask of innocence.

Do you enjoy watching scary movies? If so, what is one of your favourites and why?

I like tension-filled suspense films with interesting characters and sudden, unexpected plot twists. Like the old Alfred Hitchcock movies. I loved the well-developed characters and the constantly building suspense in the recent film Hunger Games. I need to be mentally and emotionally invested in the characters in order to care what happens to them. I’m not into gore… images of people with their heads split open and their eyes gouged out, etc. I think the psychological aspects of the human personality can be much more terrifying than sensationalized violence, and the fear of what’s going to happen is more intense than the emotion the viewer feels when the event takes place.

SWMF

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MEDIA RELEASE: Stranger With My Face announces special international guest Jennifer Lynch

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Tickets are now on sale for the niche genre festival, 7-10 March in Hobart

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jennifer Lynch directing Hisss in Mumbai

Hobart – 27 February— Highly regarded filmmaker Jennifer Lynch (daughter of iconic filmmaker David Lynch) will be a special guest at the Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival in Hobart next week.

Lynch will be present for the opening night film Despite the Gods, a documentary which details her difficult experiences while directing the feature film Hissss in India.

The film’s director, Australian Penny Vozniak, will also be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A.

“This is the ideal film to open the festival,” says Stranger With My Face’s Briony Kidd, “It’s not only a hugely entertaining doco, but it concerns the struggle of a female director making genre cinema, so will be of particular interest to our audience and the other visiting filmmakers.”

“We’re excited to have Jennifer at the festival, because she’s had a fascinating career to date and her work is so strong and original.”

The Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival focuses on female perspectives in the horror genre and highlights the work of women specifically, in an area of the film industry where they are greatly underrepresented behind the camera. Continue reading →

Little gems at SWMF 2013

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TheStolen200X200There may be one or two extra films sneaking into the festival, but for the moment….We are pleased to be able to announce the short film line-up for 2013…

These films are unique and potent contributions to the program, each reflecting on the idea of ‘the darkness within’ in some sense.

(With the exception of Destri Martino’s The Director, it has to be said, but you’ll understand why that’s screening when you see it.)

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