Red-carpet start to Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival

THE MERCURY

Horror film directors Jennifer Lynch, centre left, of the US, and Penny Vozniak, of Sydney, were special guests at the Stranger With My Face horror movie festival opening last night at the Peacock Theatre. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

THE Stranger With My Face horror film festival began with a scream last night, with guests walking the red carpet outside the Peacock Theatre in Hobart's Salamanca Place.

The four-day festival's first event featured the screening and judging of entries in this year's 48-Hour Tasploitation Challenge, a series of short horror films with a Tasmanian twist.

This year's special guest is filmmaker Jennifer Lynch, daughter of surrealist filmmaker David Lynch, and director of the psychological thrillers Chained and Surveillance, both of which are screening as part of the festival.

Other guest judges included horror filmmaker Ursula Dabrowsky, Abi Binning from Wide Angle Tasmania, Ben Hellwig from Monster Pictures, Andrew McPhail from Screen Tasmania and MONA's Kirsha Kaechele.

The festival, focusing on female horror filmmakers, continues tonight with Despite the Gods, the story of Jennifer Lynch's struggles to make her movie Hisss in India.

Other events include screenings of Surveillance at MONA, a screening of Chained at the Peacock Theatre followed by a Q&A with Jennifer Lynch tomorrow night, and a monster make-up master class with special-effects artist Steve Boyle tomorrow afternoon.

The festival ends on Sunday.

Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival special guest Jennifer Lynch will screen 'Chained', 'Surveillance' and 'Despite The Gods'

Posted by Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival on February 27, 2013

Tickets are now on sale for the niche genre festival, 7-10 March in Hobart 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hobart – 27 February— Highly regarded filmmaker Jennifer Lynch (daughter of iconic filmmaker David Lynch) will be a special guest at the Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival in Hobart next week. 

Lynch will be present for the opening night film Despite the Gods, a documentary which details her difficult experiences while directing the feature film Hissss in India. 

The film’s director, Australian Penny Vozniak, will also be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. 

“This is the ideal film to open the festival,” says Stranger With My Face’s Briony Kidd, “It’s not only a hugely entertaining doco, but it concerns the struggle of a female director making genre cinema, so will be of particular interest to our audience and the other visiting filmmakers.” 

“We’re excited to have Jennifer at the festival, because she’s had a fascinating career to date and her work is so strong and original.” 

The Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival focuses on female perspectives in the horror genre and highlights the work of women specifically, in an area of the film industry where they are greatly underrepresented behind the camera. 

It’s affiliated with an international movement, Women in Horror Month, and coincides with International Women’s Day on 8 March. The festival’s aims are about increasing the quality and entertainment value of mainstream cinema by encouraging diversity. 

Stranger With My Face will screen Lynch’s most recent film as director, Chained, on 9 March, with a post-screening Q&A. Well received on the international festival circuit in recent times, it stars Vincent D’Onofrio as a serial killer. 

In addition, Jennifer Lynch will introduce a screening of her 2008 thriller, Surveillance, at MONA Cinema on 9 March. MONA will also host a short program of selected films from the festival on 10 March, with details to be announced soon.