HS International Horror Film Fest begins Thursday at Central Theater
Filling the city with nightmares once again, the Hot Springs International Horror Film Festival will be held Thursday through Sunday at the Central Theater, with 46 movies scheduled for screenings.
Hosted by the Hot Springs Arts & Film Institute, this is the eighth year the festival has been held in Hot Springs. Event organizer Bill Volland said this year’s event has a strong lineup of films. “I’ll watch them all again,” he said.
All of the movies scheduled are independent films, but Volland said several have already found distribution before coming to Hot Springs. These include the films “She Never Died” and “Artik.” An animated film, “To Your Last Death,” which stars Ray Wise and William Shatner, will also be featured.
Volland said film festivals allow people to “be on the edge of the content,” noting attendees will be able to see movies months before they will be available on outlets like Netflix or Amazon.
Films will screen from all over the world, including Russia, France, Italy, Spain and Germany, in addition to movies from all over America, he said.
Attendees will also be able to meet several of the filmmakers and actors behind the movies. Volland said multiple filmmakers have confirmed they will attend.
Unfortunately, the attendees will not include “Artik” director Tom Botchii Skowronski, who
will be in Europe at a different film festival, but he told The Sentinel-Record he is still excited about the local festival.
This is Skowronski’s feature film debut, and he said he is surprised by the amount of positive reaction it has received, noting it feels “weird, but in a good way.” He has taken the film to numerous film festivals already and pocketed several awards for it. “It’s crazy,” he said.
Skowronski said when he started looking at festivals where he could submit the film, he found there are often multiple festivals occurring on the same day in different parts of the world.
IMDb summarizes the movie as a “comic book obsessed serial killer teaches his son how to get away with a series of brutal murders until the boy befriends a mysterious man who threatens to expose everything.”
Skowronski said he made the movie in response to the current comic book movie craze. “I’m tired of comic book movies,” he said, noting he is not trying to alienate fans of those movies, but he is making the opposite of those movies.
While the director won’t be able to appear, the star of the movie, Jerry G. Angelo, will be in attendance.
Between 300 and 400 movies were submitted for the festival. Narrowing a list of 400 movies down to 46 movies is difficult, Volland said. He sends those that miss the cut a letter informing them that their movie will not play at the festival. “That’s one of the hardest things for me to do,” he said.
The films that do screen will compete for awards to be given out at the end of the festival, including best first-time filmmaker, best horror film, best horror short, best thriller, best thriller short, best science fiction, best science fiction short and best student film.
The trophies for these awards are being made out of wood that is over 100 years old that was used in the balcony of the Central Theater.
The festival will also feature a concert by Alan Howarth. Howarth has worked on a number of movies including “Escape from New York,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Back to the Future Part III,” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” He has worked as both a composer and in the sound department on numerous films. Howarth will also screen his most recent movie, “HOAX.”
In addition to the movies, Volland said the event is educational. He said there will be several workshops, including mask making with Tony Buck Studios, a sound workshop with Howarth and how to make cost-friendly blood and gore effects with John Burton.
A festival pass is $55, a day pass is $25 and a single movie ticket is $10.