Stranger With My Face Film Festival Announces Key 2017 Titles
Debi Moore
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Earlier this year we let you know the dates and submission info for Australia’s 2017 Stranger With My Face International Film Festival, and now we’re back with a few additional details on this year’s event, including the key titles and attendees announced so far.
From the Press Release:
The 5th edition of the Stranger With My Face International Film Festival will take place in Hobart, Tasmania, from 4-7 May 2017 with a lineup of feature films, a shorts program, a symposium, industry events, and an art exhibition. Stranger With My Face focuses on women’s perspectives in filmmaking with an emphasis on horror and related genres.
The 2017 program includes the Tasmanian premiere of the all-female horror anthology XX with one of the filmmakers, Roxanne Benjamin, in attendance; a retrospective of celebrated New Zealand filmmaker Gaylene Preston; and a screening of Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs with its cinematographer, Sandi Sissel, ASC.
“Stranger With My Face is a place for newcomers to get their films seen and to meet like-minded artists,” says Festival Director Briony Kidd, “but it’s also very much about highlighting older work that’s ripe for rediscovery.”
Roxanne Benjamin is well known as a producer of the V/H/S films, credited by many as kicking off the ongoing “revival” of the horror anthology feature film. She recently produced, directed, and wrote segments of two new anthologies, Southbound, which premiered at TIFF in 2015, and XX this year, which opens this year’s Stranger With My Face after premiering at Sundance.
Gaylene Preston, ONZM, is one of New Zealand’s most highly regarded filmmakers with a career spanning more than four decades. While primarily known for her work in documentary and factually inspired drama, Preston is influential in genre circles with two films in particular, both of which will screen at Stranger With My Face 2017:
Perfect Strangers (1991) is a “chilling romance” that stars Rachel Blake and Sam Neill, and the lesser known Mr. Wrong (1983) has recently been championed by cult cinema connoisseur Quentin Tarantino, who said, “I loved the woman who was the lead in it… she would never be the lead in the American version of that movie. And there was something so authentic about seeing her trapped into this supernatural story.”
In addition to appearing for Q&As after screenings of their work, Preston and Benjamin will take on the role of mentors for the festival’s filmmaker development program, The Attic Lab, which returns after a successful first year in 2016.
Rounding out The Attic Lab mentor team is veteran cinematographer Sissel (Chicken Ranch, Salaam Bombay, Master and Commander), who, as mentioned above, will be in attendance for a screening of The People Under the Stairs, followed by an in-depth discussion around the artistic challenges involved in the 1991 Wes Craven production.
More information on The Attic Lab, including this year’s filmmakers and featured projects, will be announced on April 24th.
Festival passes are now available to purchase at an “Early Bird” rate. The full program, including the shorts program, the Mary Shelley Symposium, and industry events, will be announced next week at strangerwithmyface.com, with individual tickets then available to purchase online and Festival Passes at standard rates.
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