Guests
Guest of Honour Lloyd Kaufman
For thirty years, Lloyd Kaufman has been the President of Troma Entertainment, the oldest continuously operating independent motion picture production company and distributor.
Since 1971, Lloyd has directed, written, financed and produced about 100 films, including fan favourites like SGT. KABUKIMAN, TROMEO AND JULIET and TERROR FIRMER, as well as all four films in the worldwide phenomenon THE TOXIC AVENGER series! He is one of the few genuine American auteur film directors, and his work has influenced other major filmmakers all over the world.
We are honoured and amazed that he will be coming all the way to Abertoir for our festival. Truly a guest of honour in every respect, we hope you will all give him the huge warm welcome that he deserves and make sure he wants to come back again!
David Bryant
Since graduating from Newport Film School, David has founded production company Bryant Brothers Productions (www.bryantbros.co.uk) producing films of all kinds for clients from schools and charities to corporates. He has also in this time written and directed many short films (Dead Wood, Heebie Jeebies, Saviour) which have been screened globally at film festivals (winning an award at Frightfest 2006), and on the internet at Urbanchillers, Filmaka and Triggerstreet.
David continues to write, produce and direct shorts and features and has written two possible follow up feature screenplays for Menan Films’ next project.
Sebastian Smith
Sebastian Smith trained as an editor. He has cut numerous programmes for major US TV channels including Discovery, National Geographic and the History Channel. Dead Wood relies heavily on atmosphere set by sound and music. Sebastian has been putting the finishing touches to the sound design, creating the soundtrack from scratch.
Richard Stiles
Richard trained at Newport Film School where he met fellow Dead Wood creators Sebastian Smith and David Bryant. Since leaving film school, Richard has continued to make short films and low-budget pop videos. Dead Wood marks his venture into feature length production. For the last year Richard has been concentrating on post production, overseeing the grading and compositing on the film’s many special effects shots.
Frazer Lee & Joseph Alberti
FRAZER LEE is the award-winning writer/director of short horror films ON EDGE and RED LINES, both starring Doug (Pinhead from Hellraiser) Bradley. He also directed the commercial campaign for TRUE HORROR WITH ANTHONY HEAD (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame) for the Discovery Channel.
Frazer was recently commissioned to write the screenplay 13 SOULS (based on a story by 'Italian Master of Horror' Umberto Lenzi) for Marloo Media Films, Germany. An accomplished script doctor, Frazer has rewritten several feature length screenplays, including PLAYING IBSEN, VIKINGS OF THE NORTHERN SEA and THREE BULLETS for Cylinder Production AS, Norway.
Four years experience working on film sets readied Frazer for his directorial debut.
This is where Joseph Alberti comes in. A talented Italian producer, Joseph and Frazer joined together to create Robber Baron Productions in 1998 with the aim of creating commercial movies suitable for theatrical, TV, film festival and internet distribution - a goal already fulfilled by its short film output.
ON EDGE (15 min, 35mm Cinemascope) has screened at 35 major international film festivals to date and was distributed in London movie theatres by Columbia TriStar Pictures attached to the feature film I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. ON EDGE was awarded the Highly Commended Prize from the UK Festival of Fantastic Films 1999, won Best Short at Halloween FilmFest Germany 2001 and Best Short (3rd Place) at Shriekfest LA 2003. Canal Plus, Film Four and SciFi Channel USA are among those who have broadcast the film on television, the latter as part of Clive Barker's Exposure showcase.
RED LINES (7 min, Digital) was awarded the Highly Commended Prize from the UK Festival of Fantastic Films 2003, won Best Picture at the Fearless Tales Genre Festival 2004 in San Francisco USA and has screened at 18 international festivals to date.. "RED LINES gave me the total creeps... This guy is a great director..." (TOBE HOOPER, director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre & Poltergeist)
Frazer's new projects include the feature length horror movie URBANE from his screenplay with co-writer Max Kinnings, also in development as a graphic novel with art by Shane Oakley (Alan "From Hell" Moore's ALBION). Frazer is also working on more feature-length, short and literary fiction projects. His first book, URBANE AND OTHER HORROR TALES is out now, available from www.frazerlee.com along with the DVD of ON EDGE and RED LINES.