Female Eye Film Festival in Toronto, Canada, is showing some brand new thrillers directed by women that you will NOT have seen playing anywhere else.
High on my list of stuff to see at Female Eye is Stacie Ponder's Ludlow, which stars Viscera founder Shannon Lark, and which I watched being edited. It's screening on March 18th and is guaranteed to scare the shit out of you.
Check out the other movies, some of which are making their world premieres. I'm suprised that they shied away from using the word "horror" to describe some of these movies; drama and thriller and suspense seem to be far less offensive terms to the mainstream movie-going public. Thank God we're not the mainstream movie-going public, eh?
Schedule you need to know!!!!:
Friday March 18th
9:00PM – 10:30PM
Location: Rainbow Cinemas Market Square, 80 Front Street East, Toronto, Canada
Pillow Talk - Dir. Bonnie Anderson (WP, Drama, 5 min, Toronto, 2010)
Pillow Talk is a story of love gone sour. Boy meets Girl. Boy loses Girl. Boy finds another Girl.
Two Cities - Dir. Nadia Awad (WP, Drama, 15 min, Toronto, ON, 2010)
A female Canadian aide worker, Lisa, is kidnapped in Darfur. Her husband desperately seeks her release, but is tangled by bureaucratic red tape. Her only hope lies with a stern government case worker, Mpumi, whose refusal to budge on policy stems from a past she can’t bear to face.
Missing - Dir. Anna Sikorski (TP, Drama, 23 min., Montreal, Quebec, 2009)
Alice, sixteen years old, wakes up by a pond near a forest. She cannot remember how she arrived there, nor why she is naked and her clothes are hanging in the branches of the trees. Her first instinct is to run home. But something sinister hangs in the air, and it follows her like a cloud. Her body begins to show signs of injury and, as she gets closer to her destination, she is haunted by memories, both nostalgic and terrible, that blur her sense of reality.
Ludlow - Dir. Stacie Ponder (WP, Experimental Drama, 01 hr : 06 min : 15 sec, Los Angeles, CA)
Krista (Shannon Lark) leaves her boyfriend behind and drives to a rundown desert motel to await the arrival of her sister Maddy (Elissa Dowling). Broken and abused, Krista downs prescription pills and cheap vodka to forget her troubled past and her grip on reality lessens.
Saturday March 19th
9:30PM – 12:00AM
Location: Rainbow Cinemas Market Square, 80 Front Street East, Toronto, Canada
Play Dead - Dir. Vanessa Revard Roman (CP, Suspense Drama, 33 min, St. Louis, MO)
A young girl with a mysterious past uncovers a family secret that puts her in great danger from a determined supernatural force.
In The Woods - Dir. Vilma Zenelaj (WP, Suspense Thriller, 1 hr : 24 min : 55 sec, Santa Monica, CA, 2010)
A vacationing couple discover their camp site isn’t as secluded or safe as they had hoped in this thriller written and directed by Vilma Zenelaj. When Eva (Greta Zenelaj) and Steve (David Landry) are nearly shot by Carl (Rocco Di Nobile), a careless and mysterious hunter, the couple quickly suspect his presence in the forest is more than a coincidence. With Carl watching their every move and his attraction to Eva becoming more evident by the moment, the couple try desperately to flee these mountains where phone service is nonexistent and the way out is miles away on foot. When Steve breaks his ankle, it is up to Eva to find a way out of the forest for both of them! Anora Wolff and Keyvan Kiafer co-star in this thriller that’s sure to keep only the most adventurous campers from daring to venture… INTO THE WOODS.
I recently recieved my copy of LUDLOW and it's pretty strong stuff.
This precocious upstart Stacie Ponder may have a future in the motion picture business.