Thomas Nicol is an indie filmmaking enthusiast from the flyover zone; when he's not making movies, he develops power grid simulation software. He heads up the local filmmakers networking group, Champaign Movie Makers, serves on the board of the Champaign Urbana Film Society, and helps program late night shenanigans at the local Art Theater Co-op. Past HPLFF offerings include "The Window Into Time" and "Bedtime For Timmy", and he's excited to bring a small share of madness to the screen again this year with "Irreparable".
Rose O'Keefe is the owner/ publisher of Eraserhead Press, the leading publishing house of Bizarro Fiction since 1999. Eraserhead Press is comprised of one main line of books and four imprints: Deadite Press, Fungasm Press, Lazy Fascist Press and The New Bizarro Author Series. Under O’Keefe’s direction, Eraserhead Press has released over three hundred titles and developed an international cult following for its cutting-edge weird fiction which has been praised by The Guardian, Chuck Palahniuk, Jack Ketchum, Boing Boing, and Cracked.com, among others.
Ryan Smith is an International Business Development Manager for a software company in Sterling, Virginia. He has been fascinated by film, particularly horror movies, from an early age. He started carving time out of his busy schedule in 2009 to pursue his desire to get behind the camera and try his hand at filming. Through short film and vignettes he has been gradually building the necessary skills to create a feature length film.
Allen Koszowski has been getting art published within the SF/horror/fantasy genres since 1973. Since then he has had over four thousand pieces published in such magazines as Fantasy Tales, Weird Tales, Whispers, Eldritch Tales, Asimov’s SF Magazine, F&SF, Weirdbook, Cemetery Dance, The Horror Show and many others. He has done work for many publishers such as Subterranean Press, Midnight Marquee Press, Gryphon Press, PS Publishing, Centipede Press and many more. Along the way he has won a World Fantasy Best Artist Award among others.
Andrew W. Jones' edgy, irreverent comedy and horror shorts have won honors at dozens of festivals world-wide.This makes it doubly strange that his young professional life has been in children's cartoons. Jones has worked on productions for the BBC, PBS, Cartoon Network and most notably the Walt Disney Company, where his segments of Disney's American Presidents won a Parent's Choice Award.
Anthony Parker graduated from Cinema Makeup School with honors and received the privilege of the protege program working at Spectral Motion the Effects, the company that brought you Hellboy, X-men: First Class, Hansel and Gretel and many more. He has worked on commercial and independent movies specializing in horror and sci-fi as a sculptor and painter. He is a long time Lovecraft and comic book enthusiast.
Ari Grabb is a Los Angeles based animator and filmmaker. His work typically blends macabre animation with humor, absurdity, and cacophonous music. You can find his work on youtube if you're into that kind of stuff. When not making films, Ari can be found within the darkest regions of Hell, riding on the back of a gigantic spider.
Aurelio Voltaire is often described as a modern day renaissance man of the macabre. He is a musician, author, filmmaker and designer of creepy toys. His music can best be described as a collection of murder ballads, tongue-in-cheek exercises in the macabre, with just enough bawdy songs about Star Trek and Star Wars to keep a convention audience rolling in the aisles.
Barrett Hunt is a first-time, amateur filmmaker from Victoria, Texas. A fan of the surreal and strange, he chose to adapt H.P. Lovecraft for his first short. Footage was shot whenever possible when he and Rolando Ramirez, his creative collaborator, and friend and actor in "The Book", Christopher Waldon had the time outside of their day jobs and lives.
Barry is a founding member of the Celtic Arts Center of Los Angeles, and a veteran stage and screen actor, director and producer. He is a five-time recipient of the Hollywood DramaLogue Critics award for outstanding achievement in theater, two Back Stage West Garland awards for Lead actor and the Los Angeles Drama Circle Critics’ Award for Best Actor in Theatre Banshee's production of Conor McPherson’s The Weir. His television credits include Star Trek, LA Law, Judging Amy, Miami Vice, Renegade, Civil Wars, and Hunter (movie of the week).