Guests
The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival is about way more than watching movies. We'll also be featuring readings by some of today's most important Mythos authors, and presentations by other Lovecraftian creators. Below is a partial list of the guests you'll meet at the festival!
Featured Guests
Screenwriter of 2023's Suitable Flesh, directed by Joe Lynch and based on H. P. Lovecraft's "The Thing on The Doorstep", Dennis Paoli achieved his greatest enduring cult popularity by penning the wickedly witty scripts for two superior 80s H.P. Lovecraft adaptations directed by noted horror genre icon Stuart Gordon: the terrific Re-Animator and its equally excellent follow-up From Beyond. Paoli and Gordon first crossed paths working for the experimental Organic Theater in Chicago. Besides those two films, Paoli has also written The Pit and the Pendulum, Castle Freak, Dagon and the Masters of Horror episodes "H.P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House" and "The Black Cat" for Gordon. Paoli has done several screenplays for prolific low-budget movie producer Charles Band: a segment of the horror anthology Pulse Pounders, Spellcaster, Meridian, and Ghoulies II. He collaborated with Larry Cohen and Nicholas St. John on the script for Abel Ferrara's supremely creepy and underrated sci-fi/horror winner Body Snatchers. In addition to those credits, Paoli wrote the gruesome The Dentist for Brian Yuzna. Outside of writing screenplays, Dennis Paoli has a regular day job as a Writing Instructor and Coordinator of the Hunter College Writing Center at Hunter College in New York. He's especially knowledgeable on Irish literature and has taught a course on Gothic fiction.
Guests
You may remember Bradford Selby from his legendary turn as Daddy Warbucks in his 5th grade production of Annie. Or perhaps from the back of his head in the Jeff Bridges/Tommy Lee Jones film Blown Away—a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that sparked a lifelong love of acting. Originally from outside Boston, he spent nearly a decade in Los Angeles and now performs with The Tellers Garden Playback Theatre troupe in Portland, Maine. This year, you can catch him in Dan Bowhers' Beyond The Drumlins and Mariah Larocque’s Silent System.
Writer/Director - "Dry January"
C.J. Arellano creates genre-forward narratives with empathy and weirdness as their key ingredients. His short “Griffica” has won several awards, including the audience award for Best Horror Short at Out on Film: Atlanta's LGBTQ+ Festival. C.J. edited “Art & Pep,” a feature documentary now streaming on Peacock about an iconic Chicago gay bar and wellspring of LGBTQ+ activism for over four decades. His screenplay The Ampersand Inn won First Place at the New York International Screenplay Awards in May 2022. At this very moment, he is running around Brooklyn, fueled by nothing but an iced green tea and a brownie, taking artsy pictures of garbage cans or something.
Writer/Director - Beyond The Drumlins
Daniel Bowhers is a New York City based visual effects artist, writer and filmmaker. His DIY approach to film began when he produced a feature length action sports movie from his dorm room. His professional career spans nearly two decades in compositing and color grading for advertising, TV and film. This unique skillset has helped create award-winning projects such as the genre bending faux documentary Blue Hour the disappearance of Nick Brandreth and the surreal fever dream Ten, Thirteen, Twelve. I would like to close by breaking the third person act to add that I also enjoy cycling, cats and pizza. Please reach out if I can help your festival or film.
Jeffrey Thomas is a prolific writer of science fiction and horror, best known for his stories set in the nightmarish future city called Punktown, such as the novel Deadstock (Solaris Books) and the collection Punktown (Ministry of Whimsy Press). Among other accolades, he has been a 2003 finalist for the Bram Stoker Award (Best First Novel) for Monstrocity, and a 2008 finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Deadstock.
