SFFF 2019.

I have returned from my trip to the Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival and it was an absolute blast. Toontown is a wonderful place that was surprisingly sunny and had way more stuff to do than I was expecting. The downtown area had so many bars and eateries, it was almost overwhelming. Imagine your town. Now imagine that every convenience store near you is now instead a bar. That is my experience with Saskatoon.

The festival itself was super fun and by all accounts, attendance was up this year. My shorts programme went over well, as did most of the other shorts that played in front of the features. 

Me introducing the Shorts Programme.

I was happy to catch Jocelyn DeBoer's Greener Grass and the horror anthology Scare Package with an audience and they both killed.

There were no shortage of special events, as my friend Serena's Drunken Cinema screening and the Saturday Morning Cartoon Party both went over like gangbusters. 

However, the biggest event of the fest was the Joe Dante triple bill with himself and actress Belinda Balaski in attendance.

Belinda Balaski (Gremlins, The Howling) & Joe Dante

Event poster art by Sebas Theriault

It was a terrific experience and many thanks to the crew in Saskatoon for having me out.

Go West Part II

Well, I'm off to Saskatoon for SFFF. Stay out of trouble while I'm gone.

SFFF Shorts

Last week, the 10th edition of the Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival unveiled their shorts line-up. You can check out the full slate here, but I thought I'd let you in on some of the good gets I'm especially stoked to see on the big screen.

A short I brought over from Fantasia is Joshua Giuliano's In Sound, We Live Forever. I love the unique narrative of this one and am looking forward to see how this plays with an audience.

Speaking of reactions, I'm sure there will be some audible squirming during Oskar Lehemaa's Bad Hair, which is easiest to byline by asking “what if Cronenberg had made The Peanut Butter Solution.”

Next, if there was ever a perfect short/feature pairing it is Jason Gudasz' Place with our presentation of Greener Grass. We will all be in absurdist overload by the end of this night I assure you.

I'm very proud of our shorts program (screening Thursday Nov 21st, 6pm) this year, as well. Entitled SHE, it features eight tales with a strong female presence either behind and/or in front of the camera. Some inclusions are current festival darlings Erica Scoggins' The Boogeywoman, Izzy Lee's Re-Home and Adele Vuko's The Hitchhiker. 

SFFF runs from Nov 19th to 24th at Saskatoon's Broadway Theatre. Click here for festival info.