SUMMIT Accepted at Macabre Faire Film Festival!

Summit has been accepted to the 2016 Macabre Faire Film Festival on Long Island. The dates are January 16th & 17th. It lines up perfectly as the last festival before the film hits VOD the following week, which happens to be during the 3 year anniversary of production! I'll let you know further details when I get them. Being from Long Island, I'll surely be there; as will hopefully some of the cast & crew who are also from Long Island!

In other news, I don't know much about how the Unreal Film Festival screening last Monday in Memphis went. One person tweeted that they really enjoyed the film and the festival said the audience had a blast. I don't know how many people were in attendance. I'm going to try to get more details next week.

Next festival, as you know, is Rhode Island's Vortex Fest on the 24th. I was also invited to speak in a panel the day before! I'm driving to the festival with my mom. I'll be sure to do a recap of that one because it's gonna be a big one.

We're only waiting on one more festival, which would be in November. Fingers crossed for that screening & more press/reviews along the way

-Christina

IndieWorks: October Recap

Wednesday was the October edition of IndieWorks, and it was a lovely evening! We had a smaller crowd than usual of about 30 people (we think because we have 2 screenings this month), but the audience was in no way lacking. Whenever we have smaller crowds, we tend to have a little more audience engagement during the Q&A's. That was certainly the case here, and the discussions had and stories told were just amazing. 

We'd like to say thank you to everyone who came out to support the filmmakers and spend the evening with us & them. We hope you enjoyed all the films and the opportunity to network with other filmmakers and film enthusiasts, and we hope some connections were made!

We'd also like to say a big thank you to our new guest hosts who filled in as MC's of the evening (and who we'll definitely have back again), Ricardo Manigat & Shelby Zoe Coley. Also, a thank you to our intern Flavio Barreiro for covering photography of the evening.

See photos from the night:

The films of the night:

Araignee (Directed by Jeremy Jensen)
Two talented spiders compete against each other. Who will be the best weaving master? 

Coffee Shop Conversations (Directed by Kimberly DiPersia)
A comedic series of vignettes in a coffee shop, capturing moments in the lives of patrons and employees. 

Introducing Parker Dowd (Directed by Lauren Ashley Carter/ Written & Produced by Rebecca Blaine Carton)
A dark comedy about a struggling actress who loses a role to her dog and must watch him skyrocket to celebrity as she descends into vengeful madness.

The Texture of the Light (Directed by Arilyn I. Martinez Cora)
A single mother is forced to revisit her past when she desperately needs the stem cells of her ex-boyfriend Javier to help improve her son’s eyesight 

Feeling Wanted (Directed by Yasmin Mistry)
Charell, age 6, woke up to find herself alone. She made breakfast, dropped her baby sister off with a neighbor, and walked to school. With a dad incarcerated for murder, a mom on drugs & a childhood in foster care, Charell knew it was time to break the cycle.

 

The awards go to...

At the end of the evening, we announced our winning filmmakers for both Audience Choice Award & Silver Whiskers Award. The Audience Choice Award is voted upon by all those in attendance, and the Silver Whiskers Award is judged by the CongestedCat Team based on a system rating 8 categories of Story, Dialogue/Writing, Direction, Acting, Cinematography, Sound, Editing, and Production Value. The Silver Whiskers winner goes on to screen again at our end of year Best of Fest event in April! 

The Silver Whiskers winner also receives $50 towards a crowdfunding campaign on SeedandSpark.com should they use the platform, and both winners received a free 2015 subscription to Bright Ideas Magazine and have the opportunity to be interviewed for our Insider Series. 

For the October 2015 lineup, our winning films were:
    Audience Choice Award:  "Feeling Wanted"
    Silver Whiskers Award:  "The Texture of the Light"

See trailers for the winning films below: 

Join us On October 28th for our Halloween Special!

Two New Reviews of SUMMIT!

After screenings, I tend to google my name and the film's title for a few days to see if I come across any reviews or social media mentions, and I was pleasantly surprised to see two today! 

The first is from ScreenRelish (a site that's kind of a big deal - has a big following) and is a very positive review! Based on how they describe the upcoming screenings of the film, I assume they came across it via the Joblo article from last month. I had sent JoBlo a streaming link in case they wanted to review it and it seems ScreenRelish got the link from them.  

The other is from 411Mania (not a site I've heard of, but also has a very decent social media following) and was definitely from the Scare-A-Con screening. It's not a positive review, but not completely negative. It's actually surprisingly flattering despite the writer not fully enjoying the film! I think what they expected to get out of the film is not what I/we aimed to do with it. But their feedback is appreciated nonetheless. Their opinion is sure to be shared by many horror fans. But I'm proud of the direction we went with Summit and it's nice to see 2 out of 3 reviewers (so far) appreciated it.  (Scroll down.)

SUMMIT Accepted at Rhode Island Intl Film Festival's Vortex Fest!

It's an amazing day for Summit! We just found out we've been accepted to Rhode Island International Film Festival's Horror Film Festival! 

"Dear Christina: Congratulations! It is my pleasure to inform you that your submission "Summit" has been selected for acceptance by our judges for exhibition during the Annual Vortex Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror Film Festival , October 19-25, 2015. 

Vortex is produced by FLICKERS: Rhode Island International Film Festival and celebrates genre films of all types. Horror, Action, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy films from across the globe will be part of this year's program. Your film is one of only 71 titles selected from over 5000 film entries from 14 countries. You are part of the vanguard of today's independent cinema, and it's with great pleasure that we champion both you and your work."

A Review of SUMMIT!

In my recap of the Scare-A-Con screening, I wrote that we noticed an audience member taking notes and assumed he was writing a review. Well, we were right! He tweeted at us with a link. Here it is: https://theindiehorrorreview.blogspot.com/2015/09/summit.html

It's pretty revealing of the plot, but I'm okay with sharing it because it's really nice being able to share an unbiased perspective on the film, and I appreciate what he had to say about it! I hope you enjoy the review too, whether you've seen the film already or not. Hopefully there will be more to come!

-Christina