Barbara Steele will appear at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival® this Saturday, October 7th at 1 pm! The First Lady of horror will be with us to briefly introduce the special screening of Mario Bava’s gothic masterpiece, BLACK SUNDAY, and will do a Q&A afterwards and will sign autographs in the main lobby. This is a rare opportunity to see the legendary actress talk about her long and storied career! Since seating is limited, 3-day pass holders will be admitted to the theater first. If you are coming for the screening on Saturday, we ask that you arrive at the Hollywood Theatre by 12:30 pm so that we can try to accommodate as many people as possible.
Barbara Steele, born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, originally studied to be a painter, but ultimately became one of the best-known and well-loved horror actresses of all time. Her first film role was in the British comedy, Bachelor of Hearts, but her breakout role was in Black Sunday, which was Mario Bava's directorial debut. Steele continued to capture the hearts and minds of international audiences in Fellini’s 8½, and gothic films like The Pit and the Pendulum, Castle of Blood, Terror-Creatures From the Grave, An Angel for Satan, Nightmare Castle, and The Silent Scream. Lovecraft fans may remember her as Lavinia Morley in the Curse of the Crimson Altar with Sir Christopher Lee, loosely based on Lovecraft’s story “The Dreams in the Witch House.” (We screened this in 2014)
After a hiatus from horror film work, Barbara returned, much to the delight of her fans, in the 1991 mini-series Dark Shadows as Dr. Julia Hoffman, and continues to pick her projects carefully. Her recent roles in Lost River (written and directed by Ryan Gosling), voiceover work in Kevin McTurk’s The Mill at Calder’s End, and most recently as the voice of Azathoth on the new Dreams in the Witch House Rock Opera’s "Fevered Dreams" EP, have cemented her place in the cosmos as the ultimate leading lady of horror.
Tickets are on sale now for the 22nd Annual H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival®, October 6-8th! This year’s lineup includes more than 40 independent short and feature films from around the world, hours of panel discussions, author readings, gaming, live events, and special guests. Buy them in person at their box office or online.
We are joined by Guest of Honor F. Paul Wilson (Repairman Jack), Philip Gelatt (Europa Report), Courtney Gains (Children of the Corn), authors Cody Goodfellow, Kenneth Hite, Tim Uren, Adam Scott Glancy; artists Heather Hudson, Jim Pavelec, Liv Rainey-Smith, Nick Gucker, and many more.
Programming highlights:
- WORLD PREMIERE of “They Remain,” the feature film adaptation of Laird Barrons’ short story “-30-.” Writer/Director Philip Gelatt in attendance
- Keynote address by F. Paul Wilson
- Special Screening of The Keep with F. Paul Wilson
- Special Screening of Children of the Corn with Courtney Gains
- Live Radio Play performance by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society
- Panel discussions, presentations, author readings
- Games and Demos with Chaosium, Guardian Games, and Petersen Games
- Pickman’s Apprentice live drawing competition
- Carbload for Cthulhu - continental breakfast and Author Signing event on Saturday morning
- Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour competition screening on Sunday
More information is on our Tickets page.
The World Premiere of THEY REMAIN, will take place at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival® at 7:00PM on Saturday, October 7th, with an encore screening on Sunday, October 8th.
This highly anticipated film, written and directed by Philip Gelatt (Europa Report) and adapted from Laird Barron’s short story “-30-”, will be shown first to the festival audience on the 60ft screen of the historic Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR. Gelatt will be in attendance to walk the red carpet, introduce the film and do Q&A afterwards, and will participate in panel discussions throughout the weekend.
“We are extremely honored to be showing this genre-bending thriller to our highly engaged audience even before it makes its theatrical run next year,” said Brian Callahan, Festival Director. “The film has already been acquired for distribution by Paladin, and the producers of THEY REMAIN know that it is a perfect fit for the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Laird Barron has been a guest at the festival in the past, and it’s only fitting that the feature film adaptation of his story premieres to the best audience in the world.”
THEY REMAIN defies categorization and journeys into the shadowy realm where nature, science, and the supernatural co-exist in horrific symbiosis. William Harper Jackson (“True Story”, "The Good Place") and Rebecca Henderson (“Mistress America”) star as two scientists investigating the root of environmental changes and strange animal behavior at a remote site where a Manson Family-style cult committed atrocities. The isolated location, the unraveling of their relationship, and the biome itself begin to lead them down a path of doom where primeval forces threaten to consume them. Whether you’re a fan of author Laird Barron or a fan of cosmic horror cinema, you will not want to miss this screening.
Barron's novels, short fiction, and poems have earned him a substantial readership among aficionados of fantasy, noir, horror, and sci-fi, and have twice won him the Shirley Jackson Award. Gelatt, similarly, combines multi-disciplinary experience as a graphic novelist and comic book creator for the "Indiana Jones" franchise, and for such companies as Dark Horse Comics and Oni Press, with his background as a video game writer for such companies as Crystal Dynamics and Frictional Games, and on "Rise of The Tomb Raider" (for which he won the WGA Award). With this pedigree, it is unsurprising that THEY REMAIN succeeds in splicing these various strains of pop culture DNA into a unique and imaginative cinematic hybrid.
Our yearly H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival Kickstarter campaign is underway for the 22nd Annual festival, taking place October 6-8, 2017 at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR!
The campaign launched about 9:30pm on August 31st, and thanks to the amazing Lovecraftian community, it funded the next evening before 10pm, in less than 25 hours! We are so thankful to have so many great audience members from all the dark corners of the Earth. The campaign ends on September 15th, so there's still time to pick up our custom Cthulhu Mardi Gras rewards, as well as ticket packages with tons of extra goodies, made just for this campaign. This is going to be an awesome year, with guest of honor, F. Paul Wilson (The Keep, Repairman Jack), Philip Gelatt (Europa Report, They Remain), Tim Uren (Dexter of "Chuck and Dexter", star of "The Curse of Yig"), plus almost 20 hours of Lovecraftian short and feature films, a LIVE radio play production by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, and much, much more.
You can back the campaign to get cool rewards in the mail, even if you can't come to the festival.
The Kickstarter is the only place to get Deluxe and VIP Ticket packages for those attending the fest, but even if you can't come to the festival, you can get a Cosmic Horror Care Package filled with Cthulhu Mardi Gras beads, doubloons, a Cthulhu bauta mask, and more fun stuff, like Kickstarter-exclusive T-shirts. These are items we're producing to support the festival, and you can support it to by pledging for them!
Shown above: artist renderings of Cthulhu Mardi Gras beads, traditional bauta carnival mask (but with a Lovecraftian twist), and shiny Cthulhu doubloons.
Apparel design sneak peek for this year's EXCLUSIVE T-shirts, babydolls, work shirts, and hoodies. You can't get 'em after the campaign ends, so pledge now.
Help us maintain the Only Festival That Understands here in Weird Portland, by backing the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival Kickstarter campaign. Support it to get the neat exclusives in your mailbox, support it if you want to come to it and have a more awesome experience, or just support it to be supportive.
This year's Kickstarter campaign, offers deluxe ticket packages, VIP experiences, and exclusive swag, to help fund the festival! In the past few years, our funding campaigns have taken you on adventures to locales far and near, and now we're bringing you a little of the New Orleans bayou with this year's Mardi Gras theme! If you're unable to attend the festival, you can still pledge for fantastic rewards at the many "there in spirit levels."
Choose from a plethora of reward levels that come with things like 3-day festival passes, VIP Reception & Bal Masque, Special Call of Cthulhu Game run by A. Scott Glancy!, custom Cthulhu Mardi Gras beads and doubloons, and more to come! The campaign ends on September 15th at 11:59 pm PDT, so don't wait, go check out the perks and rewards of (cult) membership, and we'll see you soon!
The organizers of the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR are making a pilgrimage to the hometown of Weird tale author H. P. Lovecraft, to show an amazing selection of independent short films, from around the world, to the attendees of NecronomiCon Providence 2017. Brian and Gwen Callahan will be showing over 3 hours of shorts, split into two blocks shown several times over the weekend, from Lovecraftian filmmakers in Finland, Peru, UK, Germany, Czech, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, as well as the US and Canada!
It all happens August 17-20th at AS220's Black Box Theater, at 95 Empire St. in Providence, RI! Screenings take place every day, but click here for films synopses and the film schedule.
What is NecronomiCon? Besides being the fabled and cursed tome featured in several H. P. Lovecraft stories, it is also now one of the largest gatherings of Lovecraft fans, scholars, authors, artists, filmmakers, and musicians, held every other year in Providence, Rhode Island, and this year August 17-20th, 2017. If you're a Lovecraft enthusiast on the East Coast of the US (or can get there!), click here for more information and to buy single day tickets or passes that get you access to all four days of macabre programming.
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.”
Why Lovecraftian Micro Fiction?
Lovecraft himself wrote some extremely short fiction. "Memory," "What the Moon Brings," and "Ex Oblivione" are examples. Micro Fiction is a fun way to explore a genre or topic in a challenging way. Can you write a complete story in this limited amount of space? By complete story, we mean a character, situation, beginning, middle, and end. Not a vignette, not a character study, but a story.
What do I get if I win?
- The winning authors will be published in a chapbook! Winning authors will receive 2 complimentary copies of the chapbook.
- The overall winner will also have the opportunity to participate in the 2018 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, John Shirley, Selena Chambers, Nadia Bulkin, Michael Cisco, and Tim Pratt.) Participation is not mandatory if you win.
How to Submit
You can submit your entry by clicking HERE. Full rules and details are in the description. Best of Luck!
For past Micro Fiction Contest collections go HERE.
Our new Best of 2016 Short Film Collection DVD is now available! PLUS we got ambitious and decided to release our first feature film DVD, showcasing 2016's "Best Feature" Award-winning Dead Tongues (but the disc also includes two more bonus short films).
As of this writing, both are available for pre-order, with a release date of July 18th, and an anticipated shipping date of about June 26th. Come see us at the Sigh Co. Graphics/Arkham Bazaar booth at San Diego Comic-con Booth #523 to get your copy, or pre-order online at Arkham Bazaar to secure yours and be among the first to receive it (before it hits Amazon.com)!
The Best of 2016 Short Film Collection DVD includes these amazing films from the 2016 festival, comprising both original stories and Lovecraft adaptations, with humorous takes on the Mythos, as well as soul-searing films that question our place in an uncaring universe and what separates the human from the monstrous:
- "Speaking in Tongues" (US) by Thomas Nicol
- "Vardøger" (France) by Ludovic de Gaillande
- "Poetry & The Gods" (France) by Louis Rossignol
- "Tale of Wingate's Journal" (US) by Jeremy Peterson
- "Zerch" (Mexico) by Xavier Velasco
- "The Call of Charlie" (US) by Nick Spooner
- "The Bone Garden" (US) by Monsieur Soeur
- "Hypnos" (Finland) by Juho Aittanen
- "The Package" (US) by Eric Morgret
- "An Eldritch Place" (Belgium) by Julien Jauniaux
PLUS:
- Bonus Music Video "The Calling" from Infinite Spectrum's latest concept album "Haunter of the Dark," based on the story by H.P. Lovecraft
- Highlights from the 21st Annual festival
- Lovecraftian Film Trailers including Howard Lovecraft and The Frozen Kingdom
The Dead Tongues DVD includes:
- Dead Tongues feature film dir. by Roberto Drilea and Brianna Dorn
WITH two bonus audience favorite short films
- H. P. Lovecraft's The Beast in The Cave dir. by Cameron McCasland
- INK dir. by Ashlea Wessel
PLUS Lovecraftian film trailers for The Creature Below and Badass Monster Killer!
We are EXTREMELY excited to announce that F. Paul Wilson is joining us as our Author Guest of Honor for this year's H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival® & CthulhuCon! Known for The Keep as well as the Repairman Jack series, Wilson has authored over fifty books in the Science Fiction and Horror Thriller genres, and has received numerous awards including the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction and the Inkpot Award from San Diego Comic Con.
Find out more about Paul on his official website: http://repairmanjack.com/
Submissions are open for the 2017 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival through FilmFreeway. Save on festival submission fees by submitting early. For a limited time only, before our Earlybird deadline of February 17, 2017, submit feature-length films for the same low fee as short films! Also, the earlier you submit, the greater chance you will have of being selected for any satellite events we host, including potential HPLFF screenings at Necronomicon in Providence, RI over Lovecraft's birthday weekend.
All deadlines, requirements, and fees are shown on our FilmFreeway page. Submit early, submit often!
