Brian Hauser is a screenwriter, filmmaker, novelist, and scholar of weird fiction. He has won the HPLFF screenwriting award three times. This year he will be reading from his upcoming novel Above and Beyond, a weird noir thriller set in San Francisco in 1942.
David Heath is a podcaster and blogger who has hosted shows such as Dave's Underground Goat Shenanigans,and Radio Free Oleander. He is currently the co-host of The People's Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos. He lives with his extended family in northern Oregon on a working goat farm.
Patrick Murphy is an adjunct professor at Weber State University in Ogden Utah, teaching in the communication department. He has a Master's of Arts in English and a Master's of Professional Communication. Murphy incorporates comic books, science fiction (including Lovecraft) and all things nerdy into his curriculum. He has participated in numerous pop-culture conventions and academic conferences discussing his approach to education.
Cem Karayakas was born in 1995 and grew up in Cologne. During his childhood, he was an actor on stage and television. He developed his great interest in Animation and Film through acting, but also animated movies. From 2015 to 2018 he studied and graduated from ifs internationale filmschule koeln in Digital Film Arts. During his studies, he was an animator for several projects and specialized in emotional expressions.
Andrew Gleason is a director and cinematographer who loves creating and watching horror movies. He is an active member making movies in his local Champaign film community, and volunteering with the Champaign-Urbana Film Society and Champaign Movie Makers. When he isn’t making movies, he is spending time sharing his love for movies with his two children, Eva and Liam.
Ludvig Gür is an award-winning Swedish filmmaker whose most recent film, The Outsider, is an adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name and will be shown at the festival. Apart from short films, Ludvig has mainly directed documentaries, in both short and feature-format. He has spent the last two years directing a skateboarding documentary starring Tony Hawk, entitled Pretending I'm a Superman. It is set to be released later this year.
Kola Krauze is an English actor working professionally out of London and Stockholm since 2003. His film and TV credits include The Bridge, Outlander, 24: Live Another Day, and Wallander. In his twenties he was the lead singer of cult death metal band Dark Heresy. An avid fan of fantasy and science fiction he is an expert in the field of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, as well as having devoured the writings of H. P. Lovecraft as well as other legends such as Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard and Jorge Luis Borges.
Fascinated by storytelling since he was a child, Thomas Chrétien studied 2D and 3D animation in Montréal. Over the years he worked as a director, VFX artist, editor, CG generalist. He was one of the three co-directors who made Le Gouffre, an independent, award-winning animated short film that was released in 2014. Red Moon is his first live action short film.
When Trevor isn’t finding the magic in the film footage from other film projects, he’s filming his own. His award winning short horror films "The Freeze" and "Exhibit Man" (he’s made five) have screened at festivals across North America and Europe. Whatever the project, Trevor relishes his role in shaping the final product. Among his many career highlights Trevor has worked with editor Dede Allen (Breakfast Club, Dog Day Afternoon, Bonnie and Clyde)
Currently Trevor is showcasing his latest comedy/horror short film called Exhibit Man.
Steeped in schlocky Italian gialli and the existential musings of Bergman and Tarkovsky, Bryan Hiltner makes the kind of movies he wants to watch: stylish slices of humanity crammed into genre packaging. When not slogging through post-production on his years-in-the-making sci-fi feature sLipPage, Bryan enjoys making his twin daughters laugh, going out for beers with his wife, and stressing out over the Portland Trail Blazers.