The 2012 Indie Horror Film Festival
Award Winners
With a fusion of horror, true-crime, and drama, John Borowski has come to deliver chilling films with an impact so awesome that you soon learn “nothing is more frightening than reality,” as he has. Inspired by Hitchcock, Borowski not only lives up to the title “auteur” through his diligent vision, but also through deliberate execution as writer, producer, director, and editor. As a result, his films have been called “holistic works of art,” he has earned awards, and (markedly important to the filmmaker) he has gained a staunch following of true-crime devotees. Against all odds, it’s Borowski’s passion that fuels and sustains his devotion to creating art through film.
Borowski’s debut as filmmaker began with the release of H.H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer (2004), documenting, for the first time on film, the life and times of America’s “torture doctor” who murdered countless victims in his labyrinthine castle of horrors during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Touted by Videoscope Magazine as “scary as hell”.
Borowski’s H.H. Holmes resulted in an unprecedented worldwide release for an indie documentary film. Fall 2006 marked H.H. Holmes’ debut on broadcast television (and Borowski as Television Broadcast Producer), when Court TV Canada premiered the film as a 60-minute feature show. H.H. Holmes is distributed on DVD to over a dozen countries and continues to sell worldwide. Reviews and features of Borowski’s work are covered in a variety of media, including: Variety, LA Weekly, CBS News, Ain’t It Cool News, Mancow Radio Show, Bizarre Magazine (UK), Chicago Sun-Times, Rue Morgue Magazine, Crime Library…among others.
2004 kept Borowski busy with screenings and lectures, as well as picking up awards for H.H. Holmes. At Chicago’s Midwest Independent Film Festival, Borowski earned the Best Director award, and at Screamfest LA, he walked away with the award for Best Horror Documentary. By exclusive invitation, he screened H.H. Holmes and lectured at the Chicago Historical Society, Chicago International Documentary Film Festival, St. Xavier University, and Indiana State University, as well as other Midwest libraries and colleges.
For the past 10 years, Borowski has also balanced the role of Entrepreneur, having formed and independently run his company Waterfront Productions. Through Waterfront, he produced and published a book (The Strange Case of Dr. H.H. Holmes) and a multi-media CD-Rom, as companion pieces to the H.H. Holmes DVD. Utilizing intuitive talents in the areas of graphic arts and web design, Borowski creates a branding of his films to complement and coincide with that of the merchandising.
In 2007, Facets Video Distributed Borowski’s latest film, Albert Fish, an 86-minute feature docudrama that recounts the true story of elderly cannibal Albert Fish, who lured children to their deaths in Depression-era New York City. Videoscope Magazine calls Albert Fish “Riveting and Unsettling”.
Borowski studied filmmaking at Columbia College Chicago where he earned a Bachelor’s degree. He has been tapped as Director of Photography and Editor for several independent projects, as well as commissioned by UK’s Channel Four to serve as Associate Producer on a U.K. broadcast program of H.H. Holmes. Borowski resides in his hometown of Chicago where he is currently producing his next film, Cal Panzram.
Learn more about John & his films at: www.JohnBorowski.com
Alan Rehbein is an artist and sculptor specializing in fantasy, horror, and cheescake. His work has been shown at a number of galleries and can be seen at http://www.alanrehbein.com
After graduating from the Colorado Institute of Art Alan balanced traditional commercial art assignments with costuming, metalworking, monster making and building haunted attractions. Now he divides his time between Tucson and Chicago.
Currently Alan is writing and illustrating his graphic novel- “Hell Erupts” -online at http://www.hellerupts.com
The 2012 Indie Horror Film Festival Award Nominee’s
- ALL LISTED IN RANDOM ORDER -
BEST SOUND
INCUBATOR
BELOW ZERO
RITUAL
THE DUTY OF LIVING
OCHO
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
DEADLINE
DIVINATION
VAMPERIFICA
THE DUTY OF LIVING
THE CURSE
BEST EDITING
THE CURSE
BELOW ZERO
WHAT THEY SAY
VAMPERIFICA
THE BARN
BEST FX
BETANIA
BELOW ZERO
FRACTURED MINDS
VAMPERIFICA
LOVE BUG
BEST COMEDY
LOVE BUG
ED AND THE AWAKENING
NOT ANOTHER B MOVIE
VAMPERIFICA
FRACTURED MINDS
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
LINDSAY FELTON – RAYMOND DID IT
DENEEN MELODY – AFRAID OF SUNRISE
LINDSAY GARETH – NOT ANOTHER B MOVIE
KELSEY ZUKOWSKI – WHAT THEY SAY
WENDY WISLEY – THE DUTY OF LIVING
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
CHRISTIAN GRAY – PLASTIC
MICHAEL SCHMID – HAND OF GLORY
DAVID FAUSTINO – NOT ANOTHER B MOVIE
TY YAEGAR – RAYMOND DID IT
GEORGE RETELAS – THE DUTY OF LIVING
BEST DIRECTOR
BRUCE ORNSTEIN – VAMPERIFICA
JUSTIN R. ROMINE – WHAT THEY SAY
CHRIS TASARA – DEADLINE
JUSTIN THOMAS OSTENSEN – BELOW ZERO
BRANDON HUNT – THE DUTY OF LIVING
BEST ACTRESS
JULES WILCOX – DEADLINE
COURTNEY MONSMA – DORTHY
HEATHER DORFF – WHAT THEY SAY
LYNN LAWRY – DIVINATION
SONIA CASELLI – BETANIA
BEST ACTOR
MARTIN YURKOVIC – VAMPERIFICA
DARREN MARLAR – HAND OF GLORY
NORTH ROBERTS – PLASTIC
JUAN RIEDINGER – THE DUTY OF LIVING
DAVE NILSON – MIND OF A MAD MAN
DIRECTORS CHOICE AWARD
PLASTIC
OCHO
AFRAID OF SUNRISE
DORTHY
THE DUTY OF LIVING
BEST SHORT FILM
DIVINATION
INCUBATOR
WHAT THEY SAY
DORTHY
THE DUTY OF LIVING
BEST FEATURE FILM
BELOW ZERO
VAMPERIFICA
PLASTIC
RAYMOND DID IT
DEADLINE
OFFICIAL WINNERS OF
THE SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD
(NOMINATED IN 5 OR MORE CATEGORIES)
THE DUTY OF LIVING
WHAT THEY SAY
VAMPERIFICA
BELOW ZERO
WWW.INDIEHORRORFEST.COM
WWW.SPOOKSHOWENTERTAINMENT.COM
AWARD WINNERS TO BE ANNOUNCED AT
THE 2012 INDIE HORROR FILM FESTIVAL
MARCH 23RD – 25TH AT CHICAGO PORTAGE THEATER
Mar 072012
Willy Adkins (President) and Jason Sullivan (Vice President) of Spook Show Entertainment will be in downtown Chicago tonight with a sealed envelope containing the official award nominee’s for the 2012 Indie Horror Film Festival! Provided the two don’t get jumped for this highly anticipated list of information, they will be giving the envelope to Heather Dorff & Deann Baker, the hosts of the new and growingly popular internet TV show “Filming Round Midtown” to be opened and read LIVE on air tonight! You can catch the show at 8PM CST on the EgenTV network at www.livestream.com/egentv!
Spook Show Entertainment has made several changes to this annual horror film festival this year. In Fall 2011 they made a huge announcement that the event would be changing names (formerly “Indy Horror Film Festival”) and along with the name change they moved the event to Chicago’s historic Portage Theater. They also stretched out the bloody good times from a one day event to three! Now they are going even one further and have added more award categories including Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Editing!
*Award Winners will be announced in a ceremony at the end of the festival. Winners in attendance will be presented a certificate. Those not in attendance will be sent a digital certificate to print by email. Winners will also be posted in the news feed (front page) of IndieHorrorFest.com / SpookShowEntertainment.com within 48 hours of the close of the festival.
** Our Selection / Awards Procedure: Festival Director / Producers make official selections for the festival by vote. Official Selections are then screened/graded by 5 different judges anonymously and given an overall grade on a 5 point scale for each of the qualifying award categories (with the exception of the “Directors Choice Award”). All judges points are then added together to give it a grade. The top 5 films by grade in each category are then considered an award nominee and listed on this page. The film with the highest grade in each category is considered and announced that category’s award winner at the festival. In the event of a tie for highest grade, the festival director, festival producer and festival founder will each vote on the tied films giving the majority vote the award. In the event that one of the production staff are involved in one of the films involving a tie, a 3rd party will be selected to vote in place of the production staff member involved.
*** Special Recognition Awards are given to any film that is nominated (in top 5 by votes) in 5 or more categories. The way we see it is, even if the film didn’t score the highest in any of the categories, to be a nominee in 5 or more categories means that the film was extremely good across the board. (The Festival Directors Choice Award category don’t qualify for the Special Recognition Awards)
**** The Festival Directors Choice Award nominee’s are the Film Festival Directors top 5 choice films of the festival. The Directors Choice Award is presented at the festival to the Directors favorite film of the festival. (Any film that the festival director is personally involved in at any level is not eligible for this award.)
An adept spoof of cinemas behind-the-scenes experiences, NOT ANOTHER B MOVIE combines frightening and disgusting zombies with frightening and disgusting hack directors to tell a hilarious story! With a cast that includes Ed Asner, Joe Estevez and David Faustino, its an insightful romp through the horror film industry and the horrors of the film industry! From Boomstick Films
Feb 282012
Albert Mullin is on the prowl, again. This time he finds himself haunted down by his own ravaging demons. His house, a dumping ground of horrors, is no longer the safe haven he thought it was, and his new victim, Sarah Wilson, may be his last. But while she lies tied up in Albert’s house, the outside world spins its own web of deceit. Parole officer Michael Harris is too busy negotiating himself out of his own extramarital affairs to see through Albert’s dark secrets. Darryl, Albert’s neighbor, cries wolf at every turn and no one pays attention, when, perhaps, this time they should. All have a small part to play on this, the hottest, deadliest day of the summer.
Feb 272012
ohn Everson is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Covenant(2004), Sacrifice (2007), The 13th, (2009) and Siren (2010). All of these novels were released in paperback by Leisure Books. Limited hardcover editions were also issued from Delirium Books, Necro Publications and Bad Moon Books.
Over the past 15 years, John’s short fiction has appeared in more than 50 magazines, including Space & Time, Dark Discoveries andGrue, as well as in a couple dozen anthologies, most recently in A Dark and Deadly Valley, Cold Flesh, Damned, and Kolchak: The Night Stalker Casebook. His short stories have also been translated and published in Polish and French. A wide selection of his short fiction has been collected in four short story collections – Creeptych (Delirium Books 2010), Needles & Sins(Necro Books, 2007), Vigilantes of Love (Twilight Tales, 2003) and Cage of Bones & Other Deadly Obsessions (Delirium Books, 2000).
“Letting Go,” one of the short stories from Needles & Sins was nominated for a 2007 Bram Stoker Award and three other short stories from the collection have been included in the Honorable Mention List of the annual Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthology co-edited by Ellen Datlow.
John is also the editor of the anthologies Sins of the Sirens (Dark Arts Books, 2008) and In Delirium II (Delirium Books, 2007) and co-editor of the Spooks!ghost story anthology (Twilight Tales, 2004). In 2006, he co-founded Dark Arts Books (www.darkartsbooks.com) to produce trade paperback collections spotlighting the cutting edge work of some of the best authors working in short dark fantasy fiction today (they have since produced four anthologies). He is also a digital artist and musician – some of his dark techno songs serve as the soundtrack to the horror fiction CD-ROM anthologiesBloodtype and Carnival/Circus, and in 2003 he scored Martin Mundt’s comedic serial killer stage play “The Jackie Sexknife Show” in Chicago.
John shares a deep purple den in Naperville, Illinois with a cockatoo and cockatiel, a disparate collection of fake skulls, twisted skeletal fairies, Alan Clark illustrations and a large stuffed Eeyore. There’s also a mounted Chinese fowling spider named Stoker courtesy of fellow horror author Charlee Jacob, an ever-growing shelf of custom mix CDs and an acoustic guitar that he can’t really play but that his son likes to hear him beat on anyway. Sometimes his wife is surprised to find him shuffling through more public areas of the house, but it’s usually only to brew another cup of coffee. In order to avoid the onerous task of writing, he records pop-rock songs in a hidden home studio, experiments with the insatiable culinary joys of the jalapeno, designs book covers for a variety of small presses, loses hours in expanding an array of gardens and chases frequent excursions into the bizarre visual headspace of ’70s euro-horror DVDs with a shot of Makers Mark and a tall glass of Newcastle.
For information on his fiction, art and music, visit John Everson: Dark Arts atwww.johneverson.com.
He is also on Facebook at www.facebook.com/johneverson, on Twitter atwww.twitter.com/johneverson or on MySpace atwww.myspace.com/johneverson.
Feb 272012
Chris May is a life long horror film fan and the “New Kid On The Block” in comedy world. His debut stand up performance was in August 2011. Don’t let his lack of experience fool you tho, this comic will have you laugh for hours (if not half way to cardiac arrest). Daytime Chris performs the art of tattoo at Dekalb Il’s “Proton Tattoo Studo“. With a daily dose of such a variety of personalities in and out of the tattoo shop, he is sure to never run out of material. Come see what fun Chris May has in store for you, and hit him up for some ink while your at it!
