Film at Eleven

Clarinet, the award winning short film from San Diego’s DJ Summitt, will be screening in the Carolina Film and Video Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina. Clarinet will appear as part of the opening night screenings at 7pm on February 21 at the Elliot University Center Theater on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Representing the film at the festival will be the film’s actor and writer Zac Hayes. The festival runs from February 21-24. Organized by UNCG’s Broadcasting Department, the festival’s purpose is to bring attention to the film industry and film makers in North Carolina.

Clarinet is an introspective piece on a man who, after the theft of his clarinet, is pushed into a life of depression and hopelessness. After reaching levels that many of us will never see he allies himself with a world of nihilism and angst. Cinematically beautiful and eerily surreal, Clarinet has been compared to the works of Martin Scorsese and Luis Bunuel. In 2006, Clarinet garnered attention from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting who sent DJ to Taipei, Taiwan to represent the United States at the INPUT Conference. Clarinet marks his third collaboration with writer/actor Zac Hayes of North Carolina who will be representing the film at the festival. DJ’s past work includes Doomed to Failure which is available on Troma DVD. It has also aired on television in North Carolina, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Ohio, and Utah. His work has also been featured at the Cape Fear Independent Film Festival, High Point International Film Festival and Tromadance 2005 in Park City, UT.

DJ was born in North Carolina and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a major in Film Production, He now makes his home in San Diego where he is currently working on animating an anime version of Poe’s The Raven and shooting his next film; an experimental apocalypse film entitled Hollywood’s Tears.

Starpulse (via) reports that Dean Cain, Jon Voight and Terence Stamp are set to upset Mormons across America by revisiting the religion’s darkest day in a controversial new film.

September Dawn recalls the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857 when a group of Mormons, disguised as Paiute Indians, slaughtered all but 17 small children on a wagon train on its way to California.

One man, the adopted son of Mormon leader Brigham Young, was eventually executed for the crime - 20 years later.

The film is expected to be released in May and is seen as being controversial because it presents a point of view - widely held by descendants of the massacre, but hotly contested by the Mormons - that Brigham Young had complicity in the massacre.

Voight is set to play a Mormon leader with Stamp playing Brigham Young. Lolita Davidovich also stars.

As you really ought to be aware by now, the two parts of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’ double feature, Grindhouse will be seperated by a set of fake “trailers” in order to enhance the “Grind House” experience.

Edgar Wright and Eli Roth are both making trailers for the film, but the first still for a fake trailer for the film comes from Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS and has tipped up on Sheri Moons website.

‘Werewolf Women of the SS’ will star a bunch of horror and exploitation veterans; Sheri Moon (The Devil’s Rejects, The Toolbox Murders), Udo Kier (Evil looking German guy you recognise from everything), Sybil Danning (Chained Heat, The Howling movies), Bill Moseley(The Devil’s Rejects, Army of Darkness), and Tom Towles (Plays scumbags in everything).

Solace in Cinema have a bigger version of the image.

Shooting People have just released volume 2 of Best v Best.

The major prize-winning short films from the world’s most influential film festivals and awards are collected here for Best v Best Vol Two - a definitive selection and showcase of the best shorts and international filmmaking talent of 2005 / 2006, and the second in the Best v Best series from independent film label Shooting People Films.

The ten mini-dramas and docs reflect a refreshing diversity of stories, genres and filmmaking styles. Each of these films, which received top honours, provides a snapshot of lives, characters, situations and emotions - real and fictional, comedic and tragic, universal and personal. Whether six or fifteen minutes, each film involves the audience in the world of the film in a short space of time.

All the filmmakers receive a percentage of the income from this DVD to invest in their next films

(via Twitch)

Raindance, the UK’s largest independent film festival, is now accepting submissions for its 15th year. They are accepting features and shorts of all genres from all over the world. The submission deadlines are 1 May 2007 (Early Deadline) and 1 June 2007 (Final Deadline).

For more information click here to download their 2007 submission form. Their preferred method of submitting is via Withoutabox.

The Raindance Film Festival will run from 26th September to 7th October 2006.

(via I Spit on Your Movie)

Dead by Dawn, Scotland’s horror film festival will be back from 26th to 29th April.

Tickets priced £60 will go on sale early in the New Year and accommodation and travel information will be available as soon as the tickets go on sale.

In the last three years, Dead by Dawn 2006 has sold out nearly three months before the event and that’s before any guests or films have been announced

Again in 2007, to make sure that anyone who misses out on the chance to attend the main event can still get their horror fix, we’re going to run a second all-nighter on the Saturday so you can still wind up sleep-deprived and twitching on the Sunday morning by joining us for this Movie Marathon. The programme for this event will be made up of 5 features and 10 shorts selected from the main festival programme. These tickets will go on sale two weeks after those for the main event. Again, be on the mailing list, it’s the best way to keep up with what’s happening.

Start saving.

The Cleansing, Shane Ryan’s follow-up to his multi award-winning, debut short film, Isolation is playing on the IFC channel this month with the Media Lab winners.

If you have the chance to check it out, the remaining showtimes are (all in EST):

Friday, January 19 11:10 AM
Friday, January 19 10:50 PM
Saturday, January 20 6:10 AM
Thursday, January 25 1:30 PM
Monday, January 29 10:20 AM
Tuesday, January 30 11:40 AM
Thursday, February 01 5:55 AM

Alternatively, you can see the film online here.

Alter Ego Cinema are still looking for a distributor for their first feature, Amateur Porn Star Killer but if you’ve been on tenterhooks to get hold of this film, you’ll be pleased to learn that they have burned some DVDs of which are now available for purchase.

Click here for disclaimers and details.

Since its establishment back in 1972, the Japan Foundation has been showing subtitled Japanese films overseas as part of its efforts to introduce Japanese culture to the world. In 2004, the Japan Foundation began organizing film events in Japan using those subtitled prints, in the hope of giving a wider public at home the opportunity to experience the wealth of Japanese cinema. So far, they have presented six film events in the last two years, and in February are presenting Evolving Japanese Cinema.

Contemporary Japanese cinema continues to produce high-caliber works and has drawn worldwide attention. This film event attempts to shed light on the early works of prominent directors, and provides the chance to reacquaint ourselves with the works that put them firmly on the map. In addition to the screenings, there will be a guest appearance by Shiota Akihiko, which will no doubt add dimension to our film viewing experiences.

Evolving Japanese Cinema runs from February 2nd to 4th and includes a lecture from Shiota Akihiko.

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The ever busy Lee Perkins dropped me a line earlier this week with a heads up about a few of the films he’s working on in 2007.

First up, there’s Live Evil which, according to its MySpace page is “Live Evil is a spaghetti-western-vampire-graphic-novel approach to Vampire Myths.” Perkins plays a vampire like you’ve never seen before alongside Tim Thomerson as The Priest.

Later this month more blood will flow in Edges of Darkness, in which Perkins will be playing a renegade priest who will stop at nothing to destroy the anti-christ. Jason Horton is directing this one.

Job, Deadly Rites and Desolation are all coming soon and in March, Perkins will be attending the Texas Fear Fest.

Post-production for Carnies is almost completed and filming for The Red Machine has just wrapped.