International Horror & Sci-Fi
Time for another film festival. This weekend, I drove down to Tempe, AZ for the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival. Although I had a film in the festival in 2005, this time around I was searching for good shorts for the upcoming Dam Short Film Festival. When it comes to content, IHSFFF doesn’t disappoint. Once again, there were many excellent horror and sci-fi pieces. Most of the films are live-action, but a few were animation. One that blew me away was “Glitch,” which combined beautiful motion with killer production design with an interesting graffiti/Juxtapoz/urban-artist sensibility.
Overall, IHSFFF is well-run. I just wish they’d spring for better projection. Every year, the films look mushy and full of artifacts - much worse than any other festival that I have attended. Even films that were shot super-sharp looked beat-up and degraded (I’ve projected the same films at my own festival). There were even two entire programs that were screened in the wrong aspect ratio; all the films were stretched vertically. If a better projector is out of the budget, I would suggest not transferring all the films in a program onto a single tape or DVD. It’s always better to play the exhibition copies individually. Also, it might be a good idea to find a volunteer who knows the difference between 16:9 and 4:3.