A weekend of creativity and carnage!

The 48-Hour Tasploitation Challenge invites filmmakers to Hobart
for a weekend of creativity and carnage!

After sell-out successes in 2013 and 2014 the popular 48-Hour “Tasploitation” Challenge returns in January 2016! >/b>

The Tasploitation Challenge is a national contest requiring teams to make a film while in the Hobart geographical area, with both interstate and local filmmakers encouraged to participate.

Registered teams must complete a short film (of up to 6 minutes) – including writing, shooting, editing and scoring – over a 48-hour period. The films should be loosely within the horror genre, although interpretations of this may vary wildly.

This year the Challenge timeframe is from 7 pm Friday 22 January until 7 pm on Sunday 24 January, with the films to be screened on Monday 25 January (the day before the Australia Day public holiday).

The Challenge is open to both amateur and professionals, with prizes to be awarded recognising strengths from technical skills to concept to use of Tasmania as a location. After meeting at a designated location in the CBD, the teams will be personally handed their “prompt” package at 7 pm on the Friday night. This will include three things: a sub-genre of horror, a prop and a line of dialogue. All three must be incorporated into the final film.

The films will debut at gala screening on Monday 25 January. The films will then go online (hosted privately on the Stranger With My Face website) for a limited period of 30 days, with selected festival programmers and producers invited to view them. After this time the filmmakers are free to enter their films in other competitions and festivals as desired, or make them publicly available on the Stranger With My Face website.

“It’s really important to us that the filmmakers retain the rights to their films,” says organiser Briony Kidd. “They’re the ones putting the blood, sweat and tears into this whole enterprise, and we want them to get as much out of them as they possibly can.”

The Challenge’s ethos is to encourage experimentation and boldness, while working loosely within a genre framework.

In 2016 the Tasploitation Challenge Jury will include:

• award-winning filmmaker and renowned “Ozploitation” aficionado Mark Hartley (Not Quite Hollywood, Electric Boogaloo, Patrick)
• award-winning genre filmmaker Sean Byrne (The Loved Ones, The Devil’s Candy), a Tasmanian who has recently released his second feature film to acclaim on the festival circuit
• writer, publisher and international genre festival programmer Kier-La Janisse (House of Psychotic Women)
• filmmaker Fiona McConaghy, whose recent credits include producing the webseries Noirhouse and as line producer on the upcoming Foxtel drama series The Kettering Incident

These judges will attend the awards night in person on 25 January 2016 and will decide all awards except Grand Prize Winner, which will be chosen by a special international judge (soon to be announced) from between the Jury Award Winner and the Audience Choice Winner.

The Grand Prize winner will receive $1000 in cash and their film will be screened at the Stranger With My Face International Film Festival in April 2016.

Other prizes include:

• A $300 gear hire voucher from Wide Angle Tasmania
• profiles of the winning teams on influential genre website Shock Til You Drop
• VIP passes to the Stranger With My Face International Film Festival

Wide Angle Tasmania has also offered an equipment hire discount to the value of 50 % off for any past or present Wide Angle member who is registered for the 2016 Tasploitation Challenge.

The 2013 Tasploitation Challenge winner, Ravenous .by Carmen Falk, recently debuted as one of the segments of the feature film anthology A Night of Horror Vol. 1. Other notable projects have included a satirical stop-motion animation (Malum: Evil Incarnate), a high production values black comedy (Ringfinger) and a doco-hybrid retelling of a favourite fairytale (The Red Shoes). There have been boundary-pushing “art” films, strange and quirky comedies and many gory and chilling tales of suspense, some of which can be viewed here: http://www.strangerwithmyface.com/videos/

2016 marks the first year the Tasploitation Challenge has been split off from the Stranger With My Face Festival into its own event, but the two events remain part of the same SWMF family.

Registration for the Tasploitation Challenge is open from now until 10 January via strangerwithmyface.com.

THE TASPLOITATION 48-HOUR CHALLENGE 2016

REGISTRATIONS:
Registrations will be accepted from 12 noon on 13 December via www.strangerwithmyface.com
and will close on 10 January 2016.

NETWORKING DRINKS FOR HOBART TEAMS:
6 pm Thursday, 7 January 2016
Grand Poobah, 142 Liverpool Street, Hobart

CHALLENGE SHOOT COMMENCES:
7 pm, Friday 22 January

CHALLENGE SHOOT ENDS:
7 pm on Sunday, 24 January 2016

AWARDS NIGHT AND SCREENING:
25 January 2016

Media inquiries:
Contact:
Briony Kidd
Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival
Email: briony@strangerwithmyface.com
Phone: +61 408 376 045
www.strangerwithmyface.com

MORE INFORMATION

Judges bios

MARK HARTLEY
Director Mark Hartley is a multiple ARIA award winning and AFI award winning filmmaker. After graduating from Swinburne School of Film and Television in 1990, Hartley directed over 150 music videos for Australian and international artists including Powderfinger, The Living End, Sophie Monk, The Cruel Sea, Madison Avenue, Tina Arena, You Am I and Joe Cocker. He received 8 ARIA nominations, winning two statuettes. He also won a Tui for “Best Music Video” at the New Zealand Music Awards and has been nominated for an International MTV Award.

In 2008, Hartley’s debut feature, Not Quite Hollywood, opened the Melbourne International Film Festival before having its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Not Quite Hollywood won Best Documentary at the Australian Film Institute Awards and Hartley was awarded the inaugural “AFI Documentary Trailblazer” award. Magnolia Pictures distributed the film in the US.

In 2013 Hartley directed his first narrative feature film, the gothic thriller Patrick, starring Charles Dance and Rachel Griffiths. Phase 4 Films/Entertainment One released the film in the US. Brett Ratner co-produced Hartley’s latest (and final) documentary feature, Electric Boogaloo. It premiered at the Toronto International Film festival and was selected as opening night film for the 2015 Film Comment Selects festival at the Lincoln Center. Warner Bros distributed the film theatrically in the United States.

KIER-LA JANISSE
Kier-La Janisse is a film writer and programmer, the founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies and Owner/Editor-in-Chief of Spectacular Optical. She has been a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, co-founded Montreal microcinema Blue Sunshine, founded the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival in Vancouver (1999-2005) and was the subject of the documentary Celluloid Horror (2005). She has written for Filmmaker, Shindig!, Incite: Journal of Experimental Media, Rue Morgue and Fangoria magazines, has contributed to The Scarecrow Movie Guide (Sasquatch Books, 2004) and Destroy All Movies!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film (Fantagraphics, 2011), and is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (FAB Press, 2007) and House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (FAB Press, 2012). She co-edited KID POWER! and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s with Paul Corupe, and is currently writing A Song From the Heart Beats the Devil Every Time, about children’s programming from 1965-1985.

SEAN BYRNE
Sean hails from Hobart, Tasmania. The Loved Ones (2009) is his first feature and has achieved official selection at over twenty international film festivals, winning the People’s Choice Award, Midnight Madness Category, Toronto International Film Festival (2009), The Siren Award for Best International Feature, Lund International Film Festival (2010), and The Jury Prize at Gerardmer Film Festival (2011). His most recent short Advantage (2007) had its international premiere at the Sundance Film Festival (2008) and has picked up multiple awards on the festival circuit. While doing his Masters at the Australian Film Television & Radio School, Sean received the Australian Directors Guild and Screen Sound Australia Awards for Excellence in Drama Directing for his shorts, Work?, Sport, Sunday and Ben.

His latest feature The Devil’s Candy was shot in Texas through Snoot Productions (You’re Next, The Guest, Anomalisa) and will be released in 2016.

FIONA McCONAGHY
Fiona started with filmmakers McElroy & McElroy Pty Ltd. in 1980. After serving her apprenticeship in film production for three years working on feature and television productions including Deadline, Return to Eden and Razorback, she left for the freelance world of film and television.
Some of the many films that Fiona has worked on in the role of Production Manager include Strictly Ballroom, Crocodile Dundee II, The Last Day of Chez Nous, and many television programmes and series.

In December 2002, Fiona moved with her family to Tasmania and has continued to work locally, interstate and overseas on film and advertising projects, including as line ;roducer on local productions such as the tele-feature Cable, and more recently docu-drama The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce. She recently produced the award-winning webseries Noirhouse and line produced the upcoming Foxtel drama series The Kettering Incident.

About the Tasploitation 48-Hour Challenge
The 48-Hour “Tasploitation” Challenge was initiated in 2013, funded by a small grant from Events Tasmania. The Tasploitation Challenge proved immediately popular with audiences and filmmakers alike, and returned to again be part of SWMF in 2014. The concept of “Tasploitation” is a mash-up of the words “Tasmania” and “exploitation” and refers to a style of filmmaking and/or marketing that was created to allow independent films to compete with their bigger budget counterparts. In this sense, “exploitation” can refer to exploiting a film’s subject in a salacious or sensational way that is meant to attract a populist audience, or to refer to films that are marketed in such a way – even though the film itself might be more serious in its aims. In the context of this competition, filmmakers are encouraged to interpret the concept however they wish, and may work in horror or other genres (eg. fantasy, sci-fi, experimental, crime). One of the prizes awarded, the Tasmaniana Award, is for the film that most interestingly or amusingly incorporates a specifically Tasmanian aspect (whether a location, an idea or a tone). This prize is designed to encourage filmmakers to engage with the location in which they are shooting.

The Tasploitation Challenge is open to filmmakers of all genders, amateur and professional alike, and has been one of the more “grassroots” aspects of the SWMF festival. It has proven to be a galvanising force for the local film community and has resulted in many exciting collaborations, in some cases being the impetus for a new filmmaker’s first foray into production. In 2016 the organisers are keen to encourage both experienced and newbie filmmakers to get involved.

About Stranger With My Face International Film Festival

Stranger With My Face International Film Festival is based in Hobart, Tasmania, founded by filmmakers Briony Kidd and Rebecca Thomson. Deriving its name from the young adult novel by Lois Duncan, it explores the idea of ‘the horror within’ and promotes discussion around genre and gender, from ghost stories to gore, from art house to exploitation. SWMF has a focus on female directors working in horror and related genres and aims to highlight bold new work by independent filmmakers. Stranger With My Face is a founding member of the Women’s Alliance of Fantastic Film Festivals (WAFFF), along with Etheria Film Night (Los Angeles), Tokyo Scream Queens Film Festival and Ax Wound Film Festival (Brattleboro). It was voted in the Top 5 Coolest Women’s Film Festivals in the world by Movie Maker Magazine in 2013 and guest filmmaker Jennifer Lynch (Chained, The Walking Dead) described it as follows:

“Nothing short of magical. It was transformative for me. I think what is being done there, and celebrated there and made possible as a result, is the best I have seen at any fest… I want to be there every year.”

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Briony Kidd, Stranger With My Face Horror Film Festival