Heidi Honeycutt is an American journalist, author, actress, filmmaker, film programmer, and co-founder of the Los Angeles-based Etheria Film Night, [1] [2] [3] a film festival that showcases short films by women directors. She established the festival in 2014 with Stacy Pippi Hammon, [4] [5] and serves as its Director of Programming. [4] [6] Honeycutt and Hammon had previously run the Viscera Film Festival alongside Shannon Lark. [7] As a journalist, Honeycutt has written for such magazines as Fangoria and Famous Monsters of Filmland . [4] [8]
In 2007, Honeycutt wrote, produced, and starred in the short film Wretched, which she also co-directed with Leslie Delano. [9] She also appeared as herself in the horror mockumentary, The Once and Future Smash. [10]
Bruce McDonald is a Canadian film and television director, writer, and producer. Born in Kingston, Ontario, he rose to prominence in the 1980s as part of the loosely-affiliated Toronto New Wave.
Victor Ronald Salva is an American filmmaker and convicted sex offender. The self-described protégé of Francis Ford Coppola, he has primarily worked in the horror genre, most notably as the writer-director of the commercially successful Jeepers Creepers (2001) and its sequels Jeepers Creepers 2 (2003) and Jeepers Creepers 3 (2017). Outside of horror, Salva wrote and directed the fantasy-drama film Powder (1995). Salva's filmmaking career has been controversial due to his 1988 conviction for sexually abusing a 12-year-old actor who starred in his feature film debut Clownhouse (1989) and videotaping the encounter, along with possessing child pornography, having been publicised in 2006. This has led to protests against his films, including a boycott of Powder organized by his victim.
Sean Sexton Cunningham is an American filmmaker, director, producer, and writer. He is best known for directing and producing several horror films, beginning in the early 1970s.
The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is the world's largest Indigenous film and media arts festival, held annually in Toronto. The festival focuses on the film, video, radio, and new media work of Indigenous, Aboriginal and First Peoples from around the world. The festival includes screenings, parties, panel discussions, and cultural events.
Gareth James Edwards is an English filmmaker. He gained recognition for Monsters (2010), an independent film in which he served as writer, director, cinematographer, and visual effects artist. He subsequently directed Godzilla (2014), a reboot of Toho's Godzilla franchise and the first film in Legendary's MonsterVerse, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), the first installment of the Star Wars anthology series and an immediate prequel to Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977). He returned to making original films with the science fiction thriller The Creator (2023).
Andrew N. Shearer is an underground filmmaker, journalist and punk rock musician living and working in the region of Athens, Georgia. He is the co-founder with actress and filmmaker Monica Puller of Gonzoriffic Films, a DIY arts collective which has produced dozens of short and feature-length microcinema films since its founding in 2001. Shearer has served as the sole owner and operator of Gonzoriffic since 2012.
The Viscera Film Festival was an annual Los Angeles-based horror film festival for women filmmakers. Originally an online festival, Viscera was founded in 2007 by Shannon Lark and Heidi Honeycutt. In July 2010, the festival became a live event with screenings held at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. All of the screenings were short films. After the Egyptian Theatre premiere, Viscera toured their yearly film lineup at events held around the world for the rest of the year. The Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo was a subsidiary festival.
Etheria Film Night is an annual Los Angeles–based genre film festival for new short films by women directors. Etheria Film Night was founded in 2014 by Heidi Honeycutt, Stacy Pippi Hammon, and Kayley Viteo, former Viscera Film Festival staff members. The festival screens a curated lineup of horror, science fiction, thriller, fantasy, dark comedy, and action short films and sometimes a feature film.
Michael Mongillo is an American feature film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for the 2007 mockumentary Being Michael Madsen, the 2017 supernatural mystery Diane, and the 2021 sci-fi thriller The Changed.
Izzy Lee is an American filmmaker and writer, known for her short films Re-Home (2019), The Obliteration of the Chickens (2019), My Monster (2018), and Innsmouth, which she produced through her company Nihil Noctem. She has written for multiple outlets such as Birth.Movies.Death, Rue Morgue, TwitchFilm, and Fangoria and has also helped program and curate film festivals like the Boston Underground and the Boston Sci-Fi Fest.
XYZ Films is an American film production and sales company founded in 2008 by Aram Tertzakian, Nate Bolotin and Nick Spicer, and is based in Los Angeles. It focuses on international genre films, including The Raid: Redemption, The Raid 2 and On the Job.
Robert Rippberger is an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter. He is the director of the upcoming sci-fi movie, Renner, producer of The Inventor, writer/director of Those Who Walk Away (film) starring BooBoo Stewart, the director/producer of Strive with Oscar winner Danny Glover, the director of the feature documentary Public Enemy Number One (film) from Executive Producer Ice-T, and director/producer of the Hulu released documentary 7 Days in Syria. Robert executive produced with Jason Blum the feature documentary Alive and Kicking. The film was sold to Magnolia Pictures and Netflix after its debut at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival, where it received a Grand Jury nomination.
Gigi Saul Guerrero is a Mexican filmmaker and actress. She gained recognition for creating and directing the 2017 horror web series, La Quinceañera. In 2019, she directed episodes of The Purge and the anthology horror series, Into the Dark.
Sophia Cacciola is a Los-Angeles-based, American filmmaker, artist, and musician.
AGBO is an independent entertainment company based in Downtown Los Angeles, founded and led by Anthony and Joe Russo and Mike Larocca. The Russo Brothers are best known for their work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, most notably Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Recent AGBO TV releases include Citadel, a television series with Amazon Prime Video starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Recent AGBO film releases include Extraction, written by Joe Russo and starring Chris Hemsworth; Extraction 2; The Gray Man with Netflix in 2022; and Academy Award-Winning Best Picture film Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Kier-La Janisse is a Canadian film writer, programmer, producer, and founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. Her best-known work as a writer is House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films which many critics consider an important milestone in both confessional film writing and the study of female madness onscreen. Video Watchdog’s Tim Lucas referred to it as one of the 10 “most vital” horror film books of all time, and Ian MacAllister-McDonald of the LA Review of Books called it “the next step in genre theory, as well as the most frightening and heart-rending memoir I’ve read in years.” Her debut feature as a filmmaker, the three-hour documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, premiered at SXSW 2021 where it won the Midnighters Audience Award.
Annick Mahnert is a film festival curator and film producer. She is the Director of Programming at Fantastic Fest and a programmer at Sitges Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya and was named executive director of the Canadian genre industry platform Frontières.
Monolith is a 2022 Australian science-fiction thriller film directed by Matt Vesely from a script written by Lucy Campbell, and produced by Bettina Hamilton. Described as high-concept science fiction, it stars Lily Sullivan, the only on-screen actor in the film, as a journalist uncovering a mystery.
The Once and Future Smash is a 2022 mockumentary film directed by Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein. The film tells the story of Mikey Smash and William Mouth, who both played the same football cannibal slasher character, Smash-Mouth, in the 1970 film, End Zone 2.