Category: NEWS

The Raindance Film Festival, founder of the British Independent Film Awards, has announced that the Raindance Web Fest will this year feature 6 new awards.

The new awards web series can be nominated for are:

Best International Webseries
Best UK Webseries
Best Achievement in Production
Best Lead Actor
Best Ensemble Cast
The Raindance Discovery Award

Raindance Web Fest has made the decision to scrap the traditional ‘Best Actor / Best Actress’ categories in favour of the more inclusive ‘Best Lead Actor / Best Ensemble Cast’ categories.

Elisar Cabrera, founder and artistic director of the Raindance Web Fest, said:

“It is important that the achievements of the actors in web series are celebrated just as much as the achievements of the creators. We see no reason to distinguish great actors by their sex or even their gender; we simply want to celebrate great performances. Furthermore, many web series feature an ensemble cast as opposed to one starring character and we want to recognise that fact with our ‘Best Ensemble Cast’ award.”

The ‘Best Achievement in Production’ award will celebrate the technical disciplines that go into making a web series, such as cinematography, editing and special effects.

‘The Raindance Discovery Award’ will be given to a debut web series creator for outstanding achievement in this new and challenging medium.

Nominations for the Raindance Web Fest awards will be announced on the 2nd September 2014.

Raindance Web Fest runs on 27th & 28th September 2014 at London’s Vue Piccadilly Circus.

Submissions for the 2014 Raindance Web Fest are open. The deadlines are:

4th May – Earlybird deadline: £30 / submission
15th June – Regular deadline: £35 / submission
6th July – Late deadline: £45 / submission

Wild Eye Releasing, one of the first genre labels to embrace the retro format, is excited to announce that two of their best-selling titles are now available on VHS as part of their ongoing partnership with neo-VHS pioneers Horror Boobs. Richard Griffin’s The Disco Exorcist and Neil Meschino’s Mold! have been released as limited collector’s edition VHS tapes and VHS/DVD combo packs with exclusive new art.

From the makers of Murder University and Exhumed comes this blood, boob and bellbottom-soaked tribute to 70s exploitation sleaze that Twitch calls “Brutal, Blasphemous – a howl from start to finish.” Rex Romanski is a 1970s disco swinger who loves and leaves the wrong woman – the wicked black magic priestess Rita Maria. And now it’s up to Rex to undo the scorned Rita’s rampage of revenge, murder and destruction before she claims more lives, and possesses the soul of the woman he loves.

Neil Meschino’s Mold! is a gloriously gooey take on 1980s sic-fi horror classics like Street Trash and Night of the Creeps. A classified government project is underway to create a new weapon – a fast-growing strain of mold designed to wipe out cocoa fields – the only problem is, this mold also feeds on human flesh. And when the murderous mildew is mysteriously released in a secret lab, it wages its own war on a group of unsuspecting scientists and military officials, who are forced to fight their way to safety while trying to contain the mold before it is unleashed on the world.

Eureka! Entertainment have announced the release ofNASHVILLE, voted among the 100 greatest American films ever made by the American Film Institute and Oscar-nominated for Best Picture in 1975.  This is the first-ever UK home video release of this iconic masterpiece, directed by Robert Altman (Gosford Park, McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Long Goodbye and The Player).  NASHVILLE will be released on Blu-ray in a Dual Format (Blu-ray & DVD) edition as part of Eureka’s award-winning The Masters of Cinema Series on 26 May 2014.

A milestone in American cinema and of the key films of the 1970s, Robert Altman’s Nashvilleis one of the most influential and dazzling films ever made. Weaving together the stories and interactions of twenty-four major characters with astonishing fluidity, this audacious, epic vision of America circa 1975 has lost none of its freshness or excitement.

Taking place over five days in the nation’s music capital Nashville, Tennessee, the film follows two-dozen characters struggling for fulfilment, both personal and professional, amongst a backdrop of country and gospel musicians, outsider political campaigning, and the peripheries of life in between, building from one encounter at a time to create a wide-ranging tapestry of rich drama and human comedy.

Featuring an exhilarating central vein of musical performances (written in character by many of the actors themselves), and a phenomenal cast including Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Duvall, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Murphy and Lily Tomlin. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present this iconic work for the first time ever on home video in the UK.