by Bryn Tilly
There’s something disarming about a horror film festival being resurrected after a few years’ hiatus. One immediately thinks of the undead rising to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting general public. It’s even more pertinent that there’s a pandemic causing alarm and horror, lurking in the background.
Enzo Tedeschi and I are helming Deadhouse presents A Night of Horror International Film Festival, Sydney’s original horror fest, now in its 12th year. We are self-proclaimed “nightmare warriors”, determined to bring to audiences the best new features and short films from Australia and around the globe in the way a festival is intended, actual screenings in a theatre – including a bar – within an inclusive community vibe.
It began back in 2007, literally a night of horror short films, which is where the Festival gets its name. Founders and original co-directors, Dean Bertram and Lisa Mitchell, were so impressed with the response that the following year they expanded the program to include features, and staged the Festival over ten days at Dendy Newtown, where the Festival remained until 2017.
After Dean moved to the US to launch a new genre festival called MidWestWeirdFest, A Night of Horror fell into limbo. It was early in 2019 that myself and several of the other Festival champions came together to form a loose committee; Simon Foster, another film critic like myself, who had supported the Festival since its third year, Enzo Tedeschi, a filmmaker who had been the Festival’s Technical Director for many years, and Craig Walker, an actor who had worked the Festival’s Front of House and Red Carpet for many years.
It was time to bring back A Night of Horror, return it to its former glory, and to take it to the next level! Cold submissions, the backbone of the Festival’s program, were opened, and as program director, I set about watching more than a hundred shorts and features. This was back in October, last year.
By March 2020, we had a four-day program of seventeen sessions locked and loaded. The first press release was sent out.
Then it all went askew, courtesy of a pesky pandemic known as COVID-19.
Suddenly, in the space of a week, the Festival went from contract pen poised, to being put on ice, as we were forced to postpone until further notice.
With just Enzo and I as the skeleton crew, we held on for dear life, having appointed ourselves Festival Co-Directors. It was going to be a rough ride. A beacon glowed in the darkness, beckoning us. It was the Actors Centre Australia.
New ACA general manager Anthony Kierann reached out with a community helping hand, eager to have the Festival under its roof. But there was going to be blood on the floor, as there was no way, with the Government restrictions in place, that the Festival could go ahead in the same form as had been originally planned (and we had made the decision not to go down the online avenue).
As Head of Programming, I was forced to cut some of the screenings, condensing the program into a three-day event. It killed me to do so. One of the first sessions to go was a 40th anniversary screening of cult fave Maniac, William Lustig’s grimier-than-hell depiction of a serial killer in NYC. In previous years, I had pestered Dean to screen a cult classic, so it was with a heavy heart that I made the decision to remove Maniac from the program, along with the screenings of six other Official Selection features.
But it’s important and reassuring to note that all of the Official Selection features remain in contention for awards, and have been promoted via the Festival’s site and social media channels. We’ve made a point of emphasising that, although COVID-19 may have dented the Festival’s armour, the pandemic was in no way going to scuttle the show!
Two World Premieres! One from Tasmania, The Slaughterhouse Killer, by Festival alumni, Sam Curtain, whose feature Blood Hunt played in 2015, and one from Sydney, We’re Not Here To Fuck Spiders, Josh Reed’s “found noir” shocker. Both features exhibit a strong, distinct nightmare vibe of their own. I’m very proud that our Festival will be the first to screen these kick-arse movies, and the two Showcases, Aussie and international short films merged for the first time in the Festival’s history. The calibre of Aussie talent is really impressive.
The program represents all facets of the genre, and probes its tendrils into exciting new areas, all part of the Festival’s resurrection and evolution. Keep your eyes peeled.
A Night of Horror Film Festival returns 24-26 September 2020 at Actors Centre Australia
