The first Pompeywood Film Festival for Genre Filmmakers is due to take place across the weekend of Saturday 22nd to Sunday 23rd October 2022.
It is the brainchild of the well known local film and festival director, Sam Mason Bell and is organised by TrashArts Productions in partnership with HB Films (https://www.hbfilms.co.uk/pompeywood-film-festival/). The festival will be held at the illustrious Groundlings Theatre in Portsmouth.
The Festival is described as ‘genre’ and as Festival Director Sam Mason Bell explains “TrashArts is mainly known for making horror films, as well as other arts activities including open microphone nights at local community venues, so we wanted to create a film festival that focussed on that specific genre, but was also open to entries for other film genres”
The festival will be showing a number of feature films across the weekend including work from the renowned “…late Michael J Murphy. His films were made in a time when filmmaking by small, unfunded, independent filmmakers was considerably harder than it is now, so we want to use the Festival to highlight his work as well as the great films being made today”. The films include:”Invitation To Hell” – Dir. Michael J Murphy
- “Beyond Fury” – Dir. Darren Ward
- “Mask Of The Devil” – Dir. Richard Roundtree
- “In The Dark” – Dir. Sam Mason Bell and India Kim
- “Powertool Cheerleaders vs The Boyband of the Screeching Dead” – Dir. Pat Higgins
Pompeywood is also hosting a competition for short films (both Horror and Non-Horror) and trailers. Festival Administrator Martin W Payne explains that “the ethos of the Pompeywood film festival is to encourage as many filmmakers as possible to submit their short films for screening and so entry fees have been kept very low and the ticket prices for the screening sessions will also be kept as low as possible. We aim to encourage filmmakers from across the UK and the world to submit their work but there is a special focus on local films from Hampshire”
We had a large number of submissions and the finalists have been announced as:
Horror Category
- “Neonate” – Dir. Georgie Kerssenbrock
- “The Microscope” – Dir. Elliot Vick and Reuben Vick
- “The Hunter” – Dir. Rueben Vick
- “Witchy Woman”
- “All you can eat” – Dir. Kieran Reed
- “MicroWave Coven” – Dir. Danielle Nicole Newman
Non-Horror Category
- “Back Seat Driver” – Dir. Jake Balfour Lynn
- “Kajiuburiba” – Dir. Bailey Oliver and Nathan Henry
- “Daddys Note” – Dir. Gavin Irvine
- “The Witch Hunters Are Coming” – Dir. James Atkins
- “Stain” – Dir. Samuel H Evans
Trailers
- “One Touch” – Dir. Gulnara Ivanova
- “A Likeness In Stone” – Dir. Kevin McGuiness
- “A Town Full Of Ghosts” – Dir. Issac Rodriguez
- “Hysteria” – Dir. Brit Tobin
The winners will be announced on the Sunday evening, with awards for the best performance, best film, best sound, and best makeup amongst others. One of the final awards to be decided will be the ‘Audience Choice Best Film’.
Tickets for each day or the whole weekend are available now at The Groundlings Theatre Box Office: