Festival Team
At the 2008 Festival (From left to right) Lisa Mitchell (Festival Director),
Tess McVicker (Best Scream Queen 2008), Dean Bertram (Festival Director),
Shane K (Festival Programmer).
Everybody involved with A Night of Horror Film Festival is genuinely committed to horror films and horror filmmaking. Please feel free to contact any of the key team members at their email addresses listed below. We would love to hear from you.
Festival Directors:
Lisa Mitchell
A graduate of The Actors College of Theatre & Television, Lisa is a Sydney based actress and filmmaker, who is also active in the city's vibrant live theatre scene. Lisa has written, produced and starred in several short films, including
Annie Get Your Whale Boy and the horror film
Foresta Rossa.
Dr. Dean Bertram
Dean is a freelance writer and filmmaker who recently completed principal photography on his first feature film
Sick Day (co-directed with his brother Grant). The film explores the darker side of human eros as it follows a young woman's psychological descent through abuse and sexual obsession to sickening revenge.
He has been a fan of the horror genre since he first watched John Carpenter's
Halloween at the age of 10. From that time on, Dean's avid consumption of cinematic horror, lead, perhaps inevitably, to him founding Sydney's A Night of Horror International Film Festival. Dean has a PhD in cultural history from the University of Sydney.
Technical Coordinator/Associate Programmer/Resident Geek:
Grant Bertram
At the age of 7, Grant got his hands on a Super 8 camera and started filming. Throughout the rest of his childhood and teens he didn't stop. About the same time he acquired his first camera, Grant also gained access to an extensive collection of horror videos including such greats as
Halloween, Phantasm, Basket Case and
Dawn of the Dead. Childhood nightmares and desensitization aside, exposure to such films would ultimately dictate the type of cinema that he continues to love - bloody and terrifying.
Curator:
Jack Sargeant
Described by
The Wire magazine as mixing the "critical apparatus of Foucault's Language Counter-Memory Practice with the sensibilities of a Tod Browning movie" Jack Sargeant is a writer, lecturer, and artist who is fascinated by the limits of human behaviour, and the aesthetic, political, sexual, and philosophical challenges to these limits. An author and editor of several books (including
Deathtripping: The Cinema of Transgression, Naked Lens: Beat Cinema, Born Bad, Death Cults, and
Bad Cop Bad Cop) and an acknowledged expert in underground film and culture, his work has been described as "dangerously inspirational". Jack is a regular on the lecture circuit, and frequent guest / curator at venues and festivals in New York, Chicago, Melbourne, Sydney, London, Berlin, Brussels, and all points in-between.
Associate Programmer:
Shane K
Shane K has been involved with the film and TV industry since 1994. Best
known for his TV series "Shane K's warZone", he abandoned TV in 1996 to
focus on films. He has directed three different TV series, many short films,
music videos, and TV commercials. In addition he has written and edited a
multiple award winning feature film "ZTS State of Entropy" . His most recent
feature film credit is as editor on "Australian Pie" which is about to be
released to DVD in the U.S. Unwilling to compromise his art, and subversive
as hell, Shane K still finds time to direct disturbing short horror films
which find their way to audiences at festivals all over the world. Currently
he is seeking investors for not one, but two horror-themed feature films,
and he is editing the horror feature "Sick Day". (Investors can contact
Shane through this site).
Special Guest Programmers:
Jaimie and Aspasia Leonarder
Jay Katz (aka Jaimie Leonarder) has been involved in underground artistic ventures for well over twenty-five years. He and his wife Aspasia (aka Miss Death) are the subject of the Pagan/SBS independent film
Love & Anarchy. They are both devotees of independent cinema and run a screening venue in their own home - the Mu-Meson Archives - and operate Cult Sinema Monday once a week at the Annandale Hotel. With programming ranging from cult B movies through obscure UFO documentaries, their repertory cinema screenings (on 16mm film) are legendary amongst underground cinephiles. The duo also DJ "The Sounds of Seduction", a rare groove night covering an eclectic range of music, from easy listening exotica to cutting edge soul funk, accompanied by 16mm film projections and caged go-go dancers. Along with Coffin Eddie, Jay Katz and Miss Death co-host "The Naked City" (every Saturday between 10am and midday on FBi radio 94.5FM), which now streams on the net for the whole world to enjoy!
Judges:
Martin Vine
A Sydney native, Martin recently ended his tenure as the editor of
People magazine in order to pursue a career as a full-time graphic and web designer under his own banner at
http://www.martinvinedesign.com. Martin has a passion for movies crossing all genres and gets a real kick out of watching – and enjoying – those films derided by pretentious critics. The responsibilities of work and family have not diminished his lifelong passion for fantasy, sci-fi and horror (films, TV shows, books, comics, video games, etc). He would willingly be labelled a nerd but humbly considers himself not nearly intelligent enough. In his spare time, Martin is writing his first fantasy novel, a children's book about two mice who have adventures. He lives quietly with his wife and two daughters in the leafy suburbs of Sydney's north secretly preparing for the zombie holocaust.
Dalibor Backovic
From the dark corners of the southern land of Australia, Dalibor Backovic made his Directorial debut in 2003 with his first short film
Entombed, which was praised by horror film fans worldwide throughout the horror/fantasy film festival circuit.
With a backround in frontmanning the notorious underground heavy metal band
Nazxul, his achievements since then have been directed at producing heavy metal and industrial music videos from the likes of
Wumpscut,
Nazxul and
The Amenta to name a few. Though hailing from this Australian heavy metal music underground, Dalibor has also been pursuing his quest to release the forces of darkness with his mysterious, yet sombre & macabre filmmaking.
The Ancient Rite of Corey McGillis is the 2nd chapter in his book of the horror film makers journey. His influences hail from the classic literature of H.P Lovecraft to the cinematic works of Fulci, Romero, Argento, Carpenter, to today's new blood of the horror hallmark.
Dalibor has also influenced fellow filmmakers and artists alike. In the highest rating episode from the
Masters of Horror series - John Carpenter's
Cigarette Burns - two key characters were named after Dalibor, one (played by Douglas H. Arthurs) named "Dalibor" and the other (played by Christian Bocher) named "Backovic". The basis of the screenplay originated whilst Dalibor and fellow friends and writers Scott Swan and Drew McWeeney of Ain't It Cool.com were at Fantasia Film Festival in 2003.
2008 Festival judges (left to right): Dalibor Backovic, Chris Ruhle, Jaimie Leonarder, and Martin Vine.
