Wednesday 13 May 2009

Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2009 - Last Call for Entries!




Hot Docs 2009 has just wrapped and there's already more film festival fun on the horizon...

As great as Hot Docs is and as deep and rich as the Toronto International Film Festival is, my favourite festival may be Toronto After Dark. Head honcho Adam Lopez has worked hard over the first 3 festivals to make this not only a successful yearly tradition for genre film fans, but also to make it a whole whack of fun. I hope to provide a bit more focus on what's upcoming with the festival in the next few months, but right now they are looking to spread the word to filmmakers who may have something they would like to submit.

Have a short film that's desperately looking for an audience? Got something in the can (short or long form) that would be of interest to fans of horror, sci-fi, animation or just general "WTF was that?!" cinema? Adam and his team are the folks to contact. Not only do they typically feature at least one short film before each feature presentation (I believe last year, each of those shorts was Canadian), they also have Shorts Only programs that include both Canadian and International films.

The deadline is, yipes, May 15th, so get cracking. It looks like the deadline is simply for submitting your form, so you may not even have to have your little masterpiece completely wrapped up. For more details, here's the full press blurb below:

Toronto After Dark Film Festival - Final Call for Entries!

A quick announcement for any horror, sci-fi, action, animation or cult filmmakers out there. This is the final week to submit your short or feature film to the 2009 Toronto After Dark Film Festival. If you're looking to gain added exposure for your genre film it could be well worth your while taking the few minutes to enter. While this is only the fourth annual edition of the fest, Toronto After Dark has already established itself as one of North America's leading genre cinema showcases. Over 8,500 fans came out for last year's record-breaking Toronto event and all the films programmed including LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, REPO THE GENETIC OPERA, TOKYO GORE POLICE and I SELL THE DEAD scored extensive media coverage. This year's Toronto After Dark brings its cinematic mayhem for the first time to Summer and runs Aug 14-21, 2009. But if you want to enter, you'll have to hurry. To be considered, your film entry details must be completed online by end of day, this Friday May 15. Full details, including a fast and easy to complete online submission form, are available at the official festival website here:

http://www.torontoafterdark.com/

Last year was the most successful yet - 4 of the feature screenings sold out and the Pub After Dark was great fun for discussing everyone's thoughts after the films. Particularly since last year many of the filmmakers who attended the event for Q&As joined in at the pub afterwards. If my fuzzy brain remembers correctly, last year one of my friends raised a time line discrepancy with one of the film's producers. He mulled it over, thought that my friend had a point and made a slightly drunken phone call to the director at 1:30AM. I've been curious to revisit that particular film again to see if they cleared it up after the fact...

The festival is moving from its previous end of October home to mid-August this year. That just means that the fun and frivolity is gonna be here sooner.


2 comments:

PIPER said...

Bob is that you?

I can't see through all the hair and the blood, but that looks like you.

Bob Turnbull said...

Well yeah, but it was after the wrap party for After Dark last year - a full evening of feasting on the guts of immoral teenagers will take it out of you...

I mean, who hasn't been in that same situation, right?