Gale and Fewdio Dominate 2008 Audience Awards at DAGGERS Short Film Festival
New York, October 28 — Writer-director Richard Gale and horror filmmaking collective Fewdio were audience favorites at the first annual DAGGERS short film festival; so was TRANSREXIA, a stop-motion animation treat by the multi-talented Voltaire, who appeared in person on the festival’s first night.
“While the films that won audience’s hearts certainly deserve acclaim,” observes Festival Director Peter Gutierrez, “I’m most pleased to report that eight of the nine films we screened garnered votes in both the Best Film and the Best Film ’Pound for Pound’ categories. That points to the overall quality of the entries and the success of DAGGERS’ something-for-everyone approach to programming.”
The two other categories on which audience members voted on October 22 and October 23 were Scariest Film and Scariest Film “Pound for Pound” (explained on the ballot as “Fear & Dread per Minute”). And although their overall voting results were quite different, these two categories amazingly yielded the same top 1-2 finishers:
Audience Awards for Scariest Film and Scariest Film “Pound for Pound”: CRITICIZED (Audience Award), written and directed by Richard Gale; CREEP (Honorable Mention), directed by Drew Daywalt and David Schneider, written by Drew Daywalt
Even more remarkably, the voting in the coveted Best Film category resulted in a dead tie. So although perhaps offensive to grammarians and the late George Carlin, DAGGERS is proud to announce co-winners of the…
Audience Award for Best Film: THE TALE OF HAUNTED MIKE, written and directed by Drew Daywalt and David Schneider, and CRITICIZED, written and directed by Richard Gale.
DAGGERS represents only the latest in a long cycle of festival wins for CRITICIZED, which was recently released on DVD as an extra on Uwe Boll’s SEED. For more information, visit www.criticizedmovie.com. THE TALE OF HAUNTED MIKE, featuring much of the same talent as CREEP, was made by Fewdio, a self-described “horror troupe” based in California. For more information, visit www.fewdio.com, the Web’s first site devoted solely to short horror.
As the goal of audience polling in DAGGERS was to recognize the top two films in each category, no Honorable Mention is cited in the Best Film category or in the Best Film “Pound for Pound” slot (”Entertainment Value per Minute”), where three films tied for second place. Still, there was one clear winner by a wide margin…
Audience Award for Best Film “Pound for Pound”: TRANSREXIA, written and directed by Voltaire. For more information, visit www.myspace.com/voltairenyc.
In a way, it’s fitting that TRANSREXIA, at a mere 61 seconds, would win in this category as it was for creative work of such brevity that the “Pound for Pound” categories were designed in the first place; after all, it is hard for such a film to compete straight-up against one that is 20 or 30 minutes long.
“I hope readers of this news and the filmmakers themselves–both those whose films won and those who did not–can appreciate that this was no ordinary shorts program,” says Gutierrez. “The competition here was pretty much only from titles that have played prestigious festivals around the world, where in fact most of these films have already won top awards. Think of DAGGERS as the Olympics: the winners may take home gold, but all the films that screened are world-class.”
With this is mind, DAGGERS wishes to thank all of the filmmakers who participated and of course the public, who came out on consecutive weeknights to gasp in fright and roar with laughter. Singled out as a film event of the week in “Voice Choices” by New York’s The Village Voice, the U.S.’s largest weekly newspaper, DAGGERS enjoyed a spirited crowd that left the Pioneer Theater with the proverbial smile on their faces and chill in their hearts…
For further information, please visit http://www.twoboots.com/pioneer/.
Popularity: 10% [?]
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