Fantastic Fest Delights and Dismembers at the Alamo

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 31 August 2012 15:23

Written by Renzo Adler

The Alamo Drafthouse (1120 South Lamar Boulevard, Austin TX) is a veritable fortress of cinema decked out in art-deco regalia. Known for attracting both Austin’s eclectic artistic elite and filmmakers the world over, it is also home to Fantastic Fest (September 20 – 27, 2012), America’s largest festival for genre films.

Founded in 2005, making it practically an infant compared to other festivals, it has quickly grown in recognition and has become a hotbed for cult, Asian, horror, and sci-fi/fantasy films like a US counterpart to Canada's Fantasia.

In the past, Fanstastic Fest have held the world premieres of films such as There Will Be Blood, Apocalypto, City of Ember, Zombieland, and Gentleman Broncos. This year’s selection continues to bring a strange mix of cinematic oddities along with some classic favorites and new releases.

Films being shown at Fantastic Fest 2012 include:

• Combat Girls
  Dir. David Wnendt
  A bleak tale of two girls who, for very different reasons, get swept up in the resurgent Neo-Nazi movement in Germany.
   
• Cold Steel
  Dir. David Wu
  Snipers in WWII era China face down enemy soldiers and traitors in their own ranks.
   
• Dead Sushi
  Dir. Noboru Iguchi
  Madcap action as kung-fu girls fight killer sushi. ‘Nuff said.
   
• The ABC’s of Death
  Various Directors
   26 directors create a series of vignettes showing 26 different ways to die.
   
• The King of Pigs
  Dir. Yeun Sang-Ho
  A meditation on bullied youths and their blood-drenched and disastrous adulthoods.
   
• Room 237
  Dir. Rodney Ascher
  A documentary and analysis of Kubrick’s The Shining
   
• The Warped Forest
  Dir. Shunichiro Miki
  The bizarre follow up to The Funky Forrest, a dream-like, stream-of-consciousness film.

As part of Fantastic Fest, the AMD Next Wave Competition, which recognizes outstanding new talent in genre film directing, pits eight films from seven different countries against each other for this special award and a grant.

Quickly becoming one of the coolest and most-renowned genre festivals, Fantastic Fest continues to bring some truly unique films.

To learn more, go to http://fantasticfest.com/

Fantastic Fest
September 20 – 27, 2012

The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
1120 South Lamar Boulevard
Austin, TX 78704

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