Over the last few days, I've had an extremely busy and fruitful weekend splitting my time between two festivals. The inaugural Hexploitation Film Festival in Hamilton and the fourth edition of What the Film Fest in Toronto. All told I saw seven features and fifteen shorts.
At Hexfest, we got some great feedback this year, especially for the shorts programme that made me very happy. It was great to see one of my current faves, Asaf Livni's My First Time, flourish on the big screen as well as screening the world premiere of Niall Shukla's trippy nightmare A Doll Distorted.
As for features, I really responded to Eduardo Clorio's I Wish I Wish which is basically what you would get if the Monkey's Paw was an eighties style board game. Clorio even made the trip up from Mexico and was humbled by the overwhelmingly positive reception.
I also like Chad Archibald's The Heretics. The trio of actors in the piece (Nina Kiri, Jorja Cadence & Ry Barrett) really brought it, as well as some fantastic effects work. I've been saying for a while that each subsequent Black Fawn title increases in quality and this one is no different.
The second half of my weekend was taken up by Peter Kuplowsky's WTF Fest. His showcasing of weird, offbeat cinema continued with the likes of Terry Chiu's Mangoshake, Armando Lamberti's Green House and Takehide Hori's Junk Head.
It was a terrific three days of fringe cinema.
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