Category Archives: 2009

by Film Fest Admin

Living With Cartoons

Writer/Director/Producer: Mark Smith.

The Struggling Cartoonist, Mark Toonery and his wife Al, share their 2-bedroom apartment with Mark’s offbeat cartoon characters. At least that’s the plan until Mark sells his comic strip, Bigfoot Country. Sezquatch, Deadbeat Skunk and Thurman Q. Porcupine have taken on household chores to help out in the meantime. Also helping out (or just hanging out) are mad scientist Dr. Ratnest, who manages Mark’s website, Jayle Bat, who starred on a Spring Break T-shirt, and three renegades from Mark’s unpublished teen fantasy novels. And last are the three least qualified for apartment living, intergalactic troublemakers Petrol Jelly and the Arsonist Space Squirrels.

2 min
by Film Fest Admin

Loser pays, Winner stays

Writer/Director/Producer: Jerry Fuchs.

This animated short is a tribute to all the long hours I spent in the bowling alleys and arcades growing up. I have always had a fondness for Knights vs. Dragons. So, loving to draw dragons and goofy knights, I thought that it would be great to animate them fighting it out like the Road-runner and Coyote. I also love old arcade games and the skill it took to create characters out of the square pixels.

2 min
by Film Fest Admin

Lucy Wants To Kill Herself

Writers: Andrea Brookes, Craig Brookes; Director: Andrea Brookes; Producer: Craig Brookes.

Lucy wants to kill herself is a flabbergastingly amazing animated surreal black comedy about a melodramatic writer/poet and her pet cats expeditious attempts to keep her from suicide.
Lucy is the quintessential suicidal writer/poet. Lucy doesn’t quite belong in this world and seeks sanctuary within the surreal breach between life and death, not that she’s very successful at embracing death for long. Her cat, Mishima, who hates Lucy’s self destructive behavior only a little less than he hates being left alone, could have been a good reason for her to stay around if she weren’t so self absorbed.

13 min
by Film Fest Admin

Magritte Moment

Writer/Director: Ian Fischer; Producer: Ian Fischer, Pamela Peeters.

Trevor, a frustrated painter suffers from artist block. He searches for his muse, and in the process, gets help from the surreal visions of the painter Rene Magritte, a wallet, and a tall man wearing a bowler cap. Through his creative journey Trevor finds his happiness and his soul mate.

17 min
by Film Fest Admin

Makazie One

Writer/Director: Brent 'Clutch' Gaubatz; Producer: Matt “Redeye” Paisley.

Set in the Star Wars universe during the time period between episodes 3 and 4, an elite soldier has been sent to track down and destroy a known threat to the Empire through intense ground battles and haunting imagery of death that surround the environment. The unsuspecting enemy to the new Imperial order has no idea what he is up against when the two finally meet for an action packed surprise ending.

20 min
by Film Fest Admin

Mrs. Brumett’s Garden

Writer/Director: Patrick Rea; Producers: Patrick Rea, Ryan Jones.

Helen Brumett, an elderly woman, believes she is talking to fairies in her garden. Her husband, Abner thinks she is crazy and has plans to put her away in a home. Are the fairies just a figment of Helen’s imagination, or are they real?

22 min
by Film Fest Admin

Mythic Journeys: The Bone Orchard

Writer/Director/Producer: Steven & Whitney Boe.

In this stop-motion adaptation of an ancient myth, a noble king accepts the invitation of a sorcerer, finds himself in a spectral burial ground full of macabre magic, and learns the secret of the universe through a series of riddles.

Beautifully shot in true HD with puppets designed and created by internationally acclaimed artists Brian and Wendy Froud (The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth) and voiced by iconic actors Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Legend), Mark Hamill (Star Wars: Episodes IV, V, VI), and Lance Henriksen (Alien, Millennium), The Bone Orchard is a feast for the eyes.

23 min
by Film Fest Admin

On Edge

Writer/Director: Frazer Lee; Producer: Joseph Alberti.

This 35mm Cinemascope, short, independent, horror movie is guaranteed to set your teeth ‘On Edge’. Charley Boorman (Excalibur, The Bunker) is Peter Thurlow, an angry businessman who arrives at the dentist’s without an appointment. He gets more than he bargained for in the surgery when he encounters the mysterious Dr Matthews (Doug ‘Pinhead’ from Hellraiser Bradley).

15 min
by Film Fest Admin

Parking Garage

Writer/Director: Justin Lazernik; Producer: Valerie Wicks.

Blair can’t remember where she parked.  Was it on the first floor? The third? Was it past that column, or before it?  Unfortunately for her, this is all just the start of an unusual journey.

9 min
by Film Fest Admin

The Peasant and the Root

Writer/Director/Producer: Brock GallagherX.

After reading in a book of spells about the wonderful powers a mandrake root can grant its owner, a peasant tries to obtain one. This proves to be quite difficult; when the root is pulled it lets out a terrible scream that kills anyone who hears it. The spellbook reveals that special precautions can be taken to avoid this fate, but it involves the sacrifice of a dog. Will the peasant get the amazing powers he seeks?

4 min
by Film Fest Admin

Quiet

Writers: Steve Barr, Marshall McAuley; Director: Marshall McAuley; Producers: Rod Ramsey, Steve Barr, Marshall McAuley.

A newly-deaf girl’s struggle to cope with her disability turns deadly when she is attacked by a stalker.

Horror movies usually create tension by limiting the audience’s perceptions, to give them a sense of unease because they don’t know where the danger is going to come from. In Quiet, the protagonist goes deaf, and the audience goes deaf at the same time.

15 min
by Film Fest Admin

realTIME – it’s just a game…

Writer: Christopher Klein; Director/Producer: Steffen Mueller

A spy ring infiltrates an internet online game with real missions. Heidingsfelder is an addicted nerd and walks into the trap. He accomplishes the illegal assignments for bonus points. A journalist is collecting evidence and suddenly becomes a mission target herself.

26 min
by Film Fest Admin

Red Lines

Writer/Director: Frazer Lee; Producer: Joseph Alberti.

Young schoolgirl Emily (Kirsty Levett) has been caught running in the hallway again…  She is kept in detention and is forced to write lines by her teacher (Doug ‘Pinhead’ Bradley). All alone in the eerily quiet classroom, Emily’s night becomes a nightmare when she discovers the mystery of the ‘Red Lines’.

(out of competition) 7 min
by Film Fest Admin

Rekindled

Writer/Director: Jack Daniel Stanley; Producers: Jack Daniel Stanley, Mark Johnson.

When a woman with fragmented memories and a slippery grasp on reality returns to her lover, she discovers that he’s been disemboweling women in their basement ever since she left him long ago. The grotesque meets the sublime in Rekindled, a gritty yet strangely elegant tale of serial killers and supernatural romance.

8 min
by Film Fest Admin

Revenge Academy

Writer: Alan Steadman; Director: Andrew W. Jones.

Within the walls of Hunter Duke Academy lurks the world’s most dangerous after school club. Dedicated to death, war and vengeance, this group of malicious students must now face their greatest adversary: Public Relations.

Revenge Academy is an irreverent, blood-soaked comedy about selling out and getting even.

13 min
by Film Fest Admin

Rosfeld

Writer/Director: Henning Ricke; Producers: Marc Meester, Axel Ricke, Henning Ricke, Michael Harmata.

In 1972 NASA launches the Pioneer 10 satellite. On board it carries a golden plaque with an engraved message for extraterrestrial intelligent life: The symbolic picture of our solar system and the image of a man and a woman.

For the inhabitants of Rosfeld encounters of the third kind are not on their daily agenda. A lot more pressing is the question why rival neighboring village Bisiningen has once again won the local football tournament. All attempts by Rosfeld’s mayor Berger to change his insignificant village’s fate have failed for years. The small world of Rosfeld is turning upside down, when unexpectedly an alien spaceship materializes over the rooftops of the village. Now mayor Berger sees his chance to eternal glory. He will make the first interstellar contact! And this time NOBODY will question Rosfeld’s right to a place in the history books! What Berger does not take into account while planning the reception is, that everything the alien life form knows about mankind fits on a small golden plaque…

30 min
by Film Fest Admin

Scrimshander

Writer/Director/Producer: George Smaragdis.

A friendship blossoms between an inquisitive young boy and a solitary bone carver. But, the old man’s mysterious past catches up with him, resulting in terrible consequences.

7 min
by Film Fest Admin

SHADOW.NET

Writer/Director: John V. Knowles; Producers: Lotti Pharriss Knowles, Guy Birtwhistle.

Welcome to The Scene… Inspired by the Wired magazine article “The Shadow Internet” by Jeff Howe, SHADOW.NET is set in the underground world of online movie piracy—a secret network of anonymous groups that compete to steal the latest films. Greg McKenna (Screen Name: Deckard) and the other members of an upstart group known as DMG are tired of being overshadowed by other groups with better access to stolen films. Deckard jumps at the chance to raise DMG’s rep with a huge score: Marvel’s latest release. But just like in any other high-risk heist, things don’t quite go according to plan.

20 min