Submissions are open for the 2020 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival through FilmFreeway. Save on festival submission fees by submitting early! The earlier you submit, the greater chance you will have of being selected for any satellite events we host, including potential HPLFF screenings at our 3rd Biennial HPLFF in Providence, RI, August 21-23, 2020 (Lovecraft's Birthday weekend!)
All deadlines, requirements, and fees are shown on our FilmFreeway page. Submit early, submit often!
Congratulations to all the 2019 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival Award Winners! With over 45 short and feature films, we had more films than ever eligible for awards. Choosing the winning films was extremely difficult, and all the filmmakers whose films were accepted this year should be extremely proud.
Categories and winning films are:
Best Feature: Color Out of Space by Richard Stanley
Best Short Film: "Red Moon" by Thomas Chrétien
Best Adaptation: "The Last Incantation" by Woodruff Laputka
Best Screenplay: "Flypaper" by Brian Hauser
Audience Choice: Color Out of Space by Richard Stanley
*Lovecraft Under the Gun: "Secluse" by team Monsieur Soeur
**Pickman's Apprentice: "Romantic Shoggoth" sculpture by Monstark
Spiritus Nostrae: presented to Vincent Price
*Lovecraft Under the Gun is a 72 hour film competition. Teams have 3 days to make a short film from scratch, using a line of dialogue and a prop that are revealed when they register. The audience chooses the winner based on technical merit, creativity, and how well they used the prop and line of dialogue.
**Pickman's Apprentice is a live art competition. This year's challenge was to create an original sculpture in 2 hours based on a Lovecraftian monster and mood. The finished works are sold by silent auction. The proceeds are being donated to relief efforts after the devastation of Hurricane Dorian.
We are over the moon-thrilled to announce that Roger Corman, cinematic luminary and all around movie making legend, will be a special guest at the 24th Annual H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival™ this October 4-6. He will be joining Guest of Honor Victoria Price on stage for a rare 35mm screening of The Haunted Palace, based on Lovecraft’s story “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”
Well known for his work with American International Pictures, and as the head of New Horizon Pictures, Corman has written, directed, and produced hundreds of films spanning 7 decades. In the 60s and 70s, he adapted eight Edgar Allan Poe stories to the screen, many of them starring Vincent Price. Corman made this adaptation of a Lovecraft story as a break from the Poe films, but AIP wasn’t taking any chances, gave the film a Poe title, and marketed it as one of the series.
Hot off the tail of its World Premiere in Toronto, The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR (Oct 4-6) will host the regional premiere of visionary director Richard Stanley’s long-awaited The Color Out of Space, based on the H. P. Lovecraft story, and starring Nicolas Cage (Mandy, Raising Arizona) and Joely Richardson as the Gardner family, who must deal with the horrors visited on their home and family by the arrival of a meteorite with destructive properties.
Richard Stanley is attending the event to make this a truly special premiere with extensive Q&A and other programming revolving around the film, which is sure to be this decade’s biggest Lovecraft movie! Deluxe and VIP ticket packages are available now, until September 8th in our 2019 Kickstarter campaign. Get yours now!
Vincent Price has long been a beloved actor in the horror genre, and starred in several very Lovecraftian films, including Roger Corman's The Haunted Palace (based on HPL's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward), Diary of a Madman (based on Guy De Maupassant's "The Horla"), and even portrayed the sorcerer John Carnby in Night Gallery's adaptation of Clark Ashton Smith's "The Return of The Sorcerer." This year, we welcome his daughter Victoria Price as our guest of honor. Victoria is an award-winning author and speaker in her own right; in additon to penning The Way of Being Lost: A Road Trip to My Truest Self and Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography, she is also an acclaimed inspirational speaker and interfaith minister. She'll be joining us to speak about growing up with the legendary Vincent Price, as we feature some of his more Lovecraftian cinematic works.
H. P. LOVECRAFT FILM FESTIVAL INVADES YOUR LIVING ROOM WITH COSMIC HORRORS!
The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival® of Cosmic Horror Streaming Edition goes Live this Friday, October 18th, with 50 Independent Cosmic Horror Films!
Lovers of Weird Tales and Cosmic Horror can binge watch over 14 hours of films, including 6 blocks of Short Films, 3 Feature Films - including the Best Feature Award Winner, Dream Eater, PLUS bonus content with Filmmaker Q&As, Author Readings, Panel Discussions, and the Keynote by Guest of Honor Aaron Moorhead (The Endless, Something in the Dirt).
Highlights include the World Premiere of feature film THE LETTER, a lush, Lovecraftian horror, set in 1930s Dunwich, the Best Feature Award winner DREAM EATER (Canada), a terrifying found footage film by Alex Lee Williams, Jay Drakulic, and Mallory Drumm, and VOIDCALLER (Sweden), by Nils Alatalo, a beautifully stark and chilling artful cosmic horror feature.
This year’s short films are an expansive lineup of literary adaptations of stories by Lovecraft and his contemporaries like Edgar Allan Poe, PLUS original Weird tales and Cosmic Horror from Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Sweden, Turkey, UK, and the US, representing the wide diversity of filmmakers creating cosmic horror cinema today!
The streaming program is available to viewers anywhere in the world! Passes are on sale through the festival’s Eventive portal at https://hplfilmfestival.eventive.org/passes/buy and include access to all streaming extras.
See the full Film list (streaming)
Our annual Kickstarter Fundraising campaign for the in-person festival Oct 4-6th in Portland, OR and our separate streaming event Oct 18-22nd on Eventive is open now!
In the Kickstarter:
- You can pledge for the in-person event which takes place October 4-6th on all 3 screens of the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR
- You can also pledge for Deluxe tickets the streaming event October 18-22nd. Available to stream worldwide. (Plain streaming tickets will be available later.)
- Regular general admission tickets for the Portland event will be available soon through the Hollywood Theatre and the HPLFF website
Pledge for VIP Experiences, meet our Guest of Honor Aaron Moorhead (Resolution, The Endless, Synchronic), see 50+ short and feature films, attend author readings, panel discussions, live performances, and more!
BACK THE CAMPAIGN before it ends on Sunday, September 22nd, 8 pm Pacific Time.
Interested in participating in Literary programming at this year's H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival?
Apply for Author Reading spots, Pitch a Panel discussion, or apply to give a scholarly or entertaining Presentation or Performance !
The reading is done. The winners are chosen. The stories are on their way to press. Congratulations to the winners of the 2019 Lovecraftian Micro Fiction contest!
Each of these super-short, super-creepy stories will be printed in Volume 5 of the Lovecraftian Micro Fiction collection, as the flip side to the Challenge From Beyond 2019. The author of each story will receive two copies of the finished book in the mail, and the top story will be read by one of our noted guests for an adoring (and pretty Weird) audience at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, taking place October 4-6, 2019 at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR.
And the winners are (in no particular order):
- TOP WINNER! "Dol-Hareubang" by J. Wiltz
- "Gateway Drug" by Jason Zuleger
- "The Herd" by Russell Smeaton
- "Mother" by Kyle Webb
- "Check Your Pockets" by Michael Carlyle
- "Domovoi" by Erik Gorka
- "Etching of The Masks" by Zachary Bishop
- "White" by Susan Hill
- "That Scar We Made" by Kerry Birmingham
- "Latex" by Sean Blau
For a round 13 stories, we also select 3 Honorable Mentions, which will also be printed in the book, including:
- "Chaos Crawls Back" by Rick Hutchins
- "He, Alone..." by David Gonzalez
- "When the Stars Were Right" by Joe Broers
Competition was fierce and this year's submissions were some of the most clever, impacting, and Weird stories we've ever read, short or not. There were so many standout stories that making these selections was nearly impossible, and if we could have made a double-sized issue, we would have! But, narrowing it down and making those hard choices is a commitment we make to both the authors and the readers. Every one of these authors can be extremely proud of this accomplishment. It was not an easy choice, but you earned it. H. P. Lovecraft himself would be proud of these tiny feats of horror!
The Lovecraftian Micro Fiction collection Vol. 5 was included at several reward levels in the 2019 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival Kickstarter, and will be available as an add-on to Kickstarter backers, as well as at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, October 4-6th, with Guest of Honor Victoria Price, Roger Corman, and Richard Stanley.
The NecronomiCon Providence film schedule and core programming schedules have been announced! Check out the great cosmic horror films they're showing, and pay special attention the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival® short film presentations. Each of the three short film block will have its main screening at the swanky RISD Metcalf auditorium (where last year's HPLFF Providence took place) in Chace Center at 20 N. Main St., featuring excellent projection and sound, plus live Q&A sessions with visiting filmmakers. If you can't make those, there will also be auxiliary screenings at the AS220 Black Box theater downtown at 95 Empire St., so that you don't miss a minute of these amazing films!
We'll also be presenting a 1-night-only "Lovecraft After Dark" block, an adults-only Midnight movie presentation of R-rated short films to titillate and horrify (Midnight, Fri Aug 23rd at AS220 Black Box theater).
Also, check out the full NecronomiCon film schedule, as well as their core programming schedule, then buy tickets to this amazing Lovecraftian event that brings together the best of the Weird in Lovecraft's hometown. We'll see you there!