Following the extremely successful virtual pandemic-edition of the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival^® in 2020, Festival Directors Gwen and Brian Callahan were thrilled to present the 2021 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival as a hybrid event for the first time! The 26th annual festival took place with live screenings October 1-3 at the beautiful Hollywood Theatre in Portland, Oregon with more than 60 short and feature films, visiting filmmakers, and in-person audiences. The virtual edition, with bonus streaming exclusive content, streamed worldwide October 8-10 with live and recorded filmmaker Q&As. 

Every year, a few meaningful awards are given to honor the films that truly exemplify the festival's celebration of cinematic adaptations of stories by H. P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries, as well as other works in the genres of Cosmic Horror, the Weird tale, and the Uncanny. The Award winners for the 26th Annual H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival were announced on Monday.

In the annual screenplay competition, The Haunter of the Dark by Brian Hauser and Philip R. Garrett stood out among the 60+ entries. The feature screenplay delivers on the Weird and uncanny as it presents a fresh and thoroughly modern mashup of the Lovecraft stories “The Dreams in the Witch House” and “The Haunter of the Dark.”

Each year, teams of filmmakers are challenged to make a Lovecraftian short film using a required prop and line of dialogue in just 72 hours. The qualifying entries are screened at the festival and the audience decides who did it best. This year’s Lovecraft Under the Gun winner was “Terror of the Lost Utensils” by Trash People from the Dump, aka Lora and Theo Friess, for their imaginative mythology surrounding mysterious silverware, complete with their signature musical elements!

The HPLFF audience is extremely engaged with all of the films that are shown, and nearly all audience members vote for the highly coveted Audience Choice Award. Top runners up were "Transfer" by Jonas Govaerts, "Dice" by Michael Squid, and Exegesis Lovecraft by Qais Pasha! The winner is, “Good Head” by Matt Servitto! This was truly a crowd pleaser, delivering a well rounded package of supernatural horror, gooey effects, and pitch perfect comedic timing.

The award for Best Adaptation went to “The Book in the House” by Gianni Di Nino and Danilo Marabotto. This beautiful black and white translation of the Lovecraft story “The Picture in the House,” had its World Premiere at the festival. Di Ninno and Marabotto shot the film 35 years ago, but the film was lost and then rediscovered in 2010. In 2020, under quarantine during the pandemic in Italy, more scenes were shot with the original actor Franco Leo, and they were able to finally finish the film!

Best Short award went to “The Relic,” directed by J.M. Logan. This frenetically paced tale of archaeologists gone wild shows us the third act of what feels like a classic Call of Cthulhu^® role playing game scenario with horrific practical monster effects, and a very satisfying Cosmic Horror ending.

Out of the 6 independent feature films screened at the festival, The Fall of Usher, earned the Best Feature award with standout performances by leads Riker Hill and Savannah Schafer. The debut feature by Kentucky filmmaker Brian Cunningham presents a beautifully modern and nuanced retelling of Poe’s stories and provides a deep exploration of his favored themes of grief, madness, and loss.

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Congratulations to all of the winners!

Submissions for the 2022 Festival are currently open on FilmFreeway. The final submission deadline is August 2, 2022.

Mark your calendars for the next H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR, October 7-9, 2022!

THE 2021 LOVECRAFTIAN MICRO FICTION CONTEST IS OPEN!

DEADLINE IS EXTENDED TO SEPTEMBER 6, 2021

What is it?

Micro Fiction is very short prose fiction. Smaller than Flash Fiction but bigger than a haiku. Usually 500 words or less. There are some famous short short stories, including Hemingway’s - For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Lovecraftian fiction usually takes the form of Cosmic Horror, Weird Fiction, or Speculative or Science Fiction with a Horror twist, as well as horror or ghost stories with an uncanny tone.

According to Lovecraft, “The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”

What do I get if I win?

• The winning authors will be published in a book with the current year's Challenge From Beyond! Winning authors will receive 2 complimentary copies of the book.
• The overall winner will be invited to participate in the 2022 Challenge From Beyond round robin story project with some of the finest modern Lovecraftian Authors! (Past authors include Molly Tanzer, Joseph Pulver, Sr., Wilum Pugmire, Nick Mamatas, Ross Lockhart, Cody Goodfellow, Pete Rawlik, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, Gemma Files, Lee Zumpe, Selena Chambers, Nadia Bulkin, Michael Cisco, and Tim Pratt.) Participation is not mandatory if you win.

• The overall winner, if planning to attend the Portland H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, will have an author reading slot reserved for them so they can read their story at the festival! (this is optional)

How to Submit

Go to the submission page on ArkhamBazaar.com - and please read all the rules and guidelines! There, you can submit up to 5 entries.

Rules, Terms and Conditions

• Stories must be 500 words or less. Entries of more than 500 words will be disqualified with no refund. Please check your word count before submitting! Most word processing programs have a built in word counter. There are also web sites for this, like wordcounter.net
• All entries must be English language.
• Stories should not require any special formatting besides normal paragraph breaks. We're looking for content, not visual formatting.
• All entries must be written by you. You may not submit another author’s work. Your original stories only, please.
• Your entry must contain your legal name, your author name (if different), and story title.
• Deadline for entries is SEPTEMBER 6, 2021
• Winning entries will be notified no later than SEPTEMBER 10, 2021.
• The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival® & CthulhuConTM reserves the right to publish the winning entries in a limited edition book with the current year's Challenge From Beyond, which may be sold to cover printing costs. All submissions may be used for promotional purposes. Authors of the top 10 entries will receive 2 complimentary copies of the book, for which shipping in the US is free, and outside the US may incur a small shipping fee. Additional copies will be available for purchase.
• Overall winner will be invited to participate in the 2022 Challenge From Beyond round robin story project, which will take place in summer 2022.

The Kickstarter has landed! This year, it's a quick one, only 10 days, so don't wait to pledge. With the ongoing global health crisis, we weren't sure what form the fest could take until it was too late to really have a full fundraising campaign, but we know a lot of you love our yearly Kickstarter exclusives, so we've put together a streamlined campaign with some cool experiences, including our VIP Drive-in theater experience in the Dalles, Oregon.

This year, anyone in the world can enjoy the festival from the comfort of their homes. If you're inside the US, you can get a full festival pass with an exclusive T-shirt and more, and those outside the US can pledge for a limited pass which gives you access to as many of the films as we can show you (10+ hours and growing). This is a first for a streaming festival for international fans, and is only available by backing our 25th Anniversary Kickstarter campaign. 

Support the festival on Kickstarter until Friday, September 25th.

The 25th Anniversary H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival streams October 1st through the October 4th, 2020, with over 50 short and feature Lovecraftian films, featuring Guests of Honor Barbara Crampton and Victor LaValle.

The highly-anticipated new HBO series, Lovecraft Country, based on the excellent and exciting book by Matt Ruff and produced by Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us) premiered on August 16, a mere four days before H. P. Lovecraft's 130th birthday. It recontextualizes the Lovecraftian narrative of battling cults and monsters from beyond with black actors during the Jim Crow era of American history. It shows the kind of story that fresh voices can lend to Cosmic horror, and uses both the history and Lovecraft to great effect. 

When speaking of Lovecraft's stories, author Matt Ruff cited The Shadow Over Innsmouth as partial inspiration for elements of the book. “It is a very specific story about a white man threatened by this mixed-race horde but it’s also one of the most effective tales of attempted lynching I’ve ever read. Lovecraft captures the fear brilliantly. I can learn from that and do interesting things with it while rejecting the underlying idea.”

While the series (and book before it) has created some controversy, both critics and many Lovecraft fans are enjoying its take on the universe of H. P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff is required reading. Get it at Amazon in a variety of formats.

You can watch the new TV Series on HBO or with the new HBO streaming service.