I’m back in this month’s edition of the glorious independent movie magazine, Film Stories, issue 27, August 2021.
This feature is an extended interview with the incredible Prano Bailey-Bond, director of the hugely anticipated British horror, Censor, out in UK cinemas now! Destined to be an influential classic.
Prano discusses directing, her influences, the COVID delays to completion, horror and censorship. It’s a follow up article to my interview with the movie’s lead, Niamh Algar – also the star of Channel 4 true crime drama, Deceit, airing now.
The magazine is available for pre-order in digital and print edition.
Hard to believe a year has zipped by since we released #FFIDENT20, but it has. Though James Moran and I swore it would be our last Turn Off Your Bloody Phone ident for Arrow Video FrightFest, we changed our minds and did a surprise ident this year in lockdown, on incredibly limited resources, to celebrate the Digital Edition of FrightFest this August and help make things feel a little bit more normal.
Turn Off Your Bloody Phone: Screenfeatures contributions from Mark Kermode, Emily Booth, Corin Hardy, Nicholas Vince, Matthias Hoene and devoted FrightFest supporters.
Written & directed by James and I, it screened before the world premieres of There’s No Such Thing As Vampires and I Am Lisa at FrightFest on 28th August, but is now available online for free on YouTube.
Thank you to FrightFest for still running a festival this summer, albeit digitally. It’s horror Christmas and we cherish the festival organisers’ efforts.
After about sixty film festival screenings internationally, Blood Shedis now finally available to buy on Amazon Prime Video for £2.99 HD or £1.99 SD in the UK and the USA. So a bargain price for a bargain shed! OR, better still, it’s free to watch if you already have Amazon Prime! So go, fly my pretties, fly… Fly over to Amazon Prime and take a peek at our bloody sheddy horror comedy short!
Blood Shed is now also screening in North America on ShortsTV, with the European premiere coming soon.
Another year, another Arrow Video FrightFest film festival done and dusted. As well as opening the 20th anniversary of the festival with #FFIDENT20 just before the premiere of Come to Daddy, I’m also really chuffed to be included in the Evolution of Horror special reviewing the festival. It’s a fantastic podcast and includes contributions from special guests, filmmakers, podcast listeners and FrightFest fans.
You can catch me at around 1 hour 13 minutes discussing my favourite film of the festival – the one that stole my heart and ate it. No hints!
This month, my short comedy play Crappy Birthday to Me premiered at the marvellous Slung Low Shorts alongside a collection of new plays by new and established writers. Slung Low 4, as it was Slung Low’s fourth outing, was performed at The Holbeck, Leeds from 18th to 21st July. I was delighted to be asked to be part of Slung Low this year – it was an honour.
Crappy Birthday to Me is a twisted family comedy about a twentysomething woman who returns home to a secret birthday party. She is less than thrilled at the idea of an awkward evening with her parents and sister, but this is no ordinary birthday bash…
Programme extract
I was super excited to be there on the opening night and meet my cast and director, and see and hear the reaction of the audience. It was a full house and I’m really proud of the team for pulling it together so brilliantly. And some horror geek trivia, the dad was played by Michael S. Siegel who was in Killer Klowns from Outer Space!
With the cast and director
I’ll be bringing this short play to London soon, and may possibly turn it into a short film, but for now… I’m happy to say that my play was the one with the most clean up afterwards… Apologies to the stage management team for putting up with the fruits of my mad brain.
And huge thanks to all of Slung Low for including me in the line up this year! It was utterly brilliant and I can’t wait to see Slung Low 5.
An extended article I wrote for the spectacular new print magazine Film Stories has now been published. The feature is about the too often overlooked 90s rom com Jack & Sarah, starring Richard E. Grant, Samantha Mathis, Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Judi Dench and Dame Eileen Atkins. Spread across five pages, I argue that the film is well worth a revisit and discuss its many merits. It includes extracts from an exclusive interview I did with the writer/director, Tim Sullivan, who was very generous with his time and shared so many interesting stories about the making of his ‘baby.’
Film Stories, Issue 5, is available now from the BFI Shop, WHSmiths and via mail order. It’s a snip at just £5.99, or it’s even cheaper if you opt for a subscription deal! This issue also includes:
The stars of Rocketman on bringing the Elton John biopic to the screen
Richard O’Brien on the lost Rocky Horror Picture Show sequels
The movie apocalypse films that have flown under the radar: Reign Of Fire, anyone?
True confessions of a movie PR rep
The woman who transformed Warner Bros’s movie marketing
Jack & Sarah: revisiting an overlooked 90s British movie.
The evolution of movie special effects, and the return of practical
Three films and he’s out: the movie career of Yahoo Serious
Celebrating the musical films of John Carney
The trick to making a horror movie remake
So don’t miss out! And I hope you enjoy reading my lovingly crafted article!
Brilliant news! My award-winning short Connie is now available to buy on Shorts International’s iTunes stores in the US and Europe! Better still, the foul-mouthed puppet is a cheap gal – a snip at only $2.99 or £1.99 respectively – so fill your stockings this festive season with twenty minutes of our little felt-covered diva.
Connie has had an incredible journey since the shoot in May 2016, playing festivals globally, including awards qualifiers, winning awards, receiving great reviews and entertaining audiences we could only have dreamed of. Being able to share it now with a whole new audience is really something else. Film festivals rock, but so few people can actually get to them, so I’m proud that Connie has been licensed by Shorts International.
The film showcases the incredible talent of our superstar, Catrin Stewart, who did an incredible job of playing two roles at once and also operating a puppet – all in just two days on set! It also features the legend that is Kim Newman. It’s a film I’m incredibly proud of. Meeting audiences at festivals and seeing their reactions to the film, and to me and the puppet, has been an extra slice of joy.
Connie is also screening now on ShortsTV’s channel in the US, with the European premiere coming very soon. ShortsTV is the world’s first 24/7 HD TV channel dedicated to shorts, and currently available to approximately 25 million homes, with more channels across the globe to come. More details on how to watch ShortsTV here.
Excellent news! We’ve struck a licensing deal with the brilliant Shorts International to broadcast Connie on ShortsTV in North America, Europe and South Asia for five years from late 2018. ShortsTV is the world’s first 24/7 HD TV channel dedicated to shorts. This is a very exciting agreement as the ShortsTV channels are currently available to approximately 25 million homes! I can’t wait for Connie to reach a wider audience and for the little puppet to expose herself on TV!
PLUS, Connie shortly be added to the ShortsTV online stores on Amazon (UK, USA and Germany) and iTunes (in over 80 countries) for purchase! So anyone who hasn’t managed to catch little felt diva at festivals can see her on the tellybox or online! Launch date details coming soon!
2018 is now in full swing, and this is my first news post since the birth of my amazing baby daughter, Ava-Grace, in January. I’m loving balancing motherhood with my writing and filmmaking, and have actually found myself with a renewed sense of vigour, despite the mountain of diapers I have to contend with on a daily basis. I’m incredibly inspired and the ideas don’t stop coming at the moment. I can’t wait to share them, but for now, I’m riding the wave of love for Blood Shed!
Since making its festival debut last August at FrightFest, Blood Shed has been selected for more than 30 festivals across the globe, winning 6 awards and garnering many more nominations, and we’ve still a long way to go! Our latest win in February was the Best International Short award at Nevermore Film Festival in North Carolina.
It’s been just over a year since we smashed our Kickstarter campaign target and began production on the the film, and James and I can hardly believe it, but Blood Shed has been selected for TWO Oscar qualifying festivals in the USA. The first is Nashville Film Festival! It’s one of the longest-running film festivals in the US and one of the most acclaimed in the South, so we’re thrilled to be part of it. We’re screening with the superb Found Footage 3D on 18th & 19th May. Nashville had nearly 5000 short film submissions this year, selecting just 215, and we’re competing as part of the Graveyard Shift competition.
The second qualifier is the amazing Seattle International Film Festival! Connie screened at #SIFF last year, so Seattle feels like home for me as a filmmaker. It’s the largest and most highly-attended festival in the USA and the selection of films this year is not to be missed. Blood Shed screens on 26th May as part of the Terror Internationale block.
It’s not that we think a film about a man-eating shed would ever actually be nominated for an Oscar, but it feels amazing to get recognition from such big festivals that get thousands and thousands of submissions from films of all genres from across the globe.
Finally, I’m happily beavering away at feature ideas, with several already scripted and others at the outline or pitching stages. I’m also keen to get back on set and shoot my next two shorts from the Summer, but am making sure I get plenty of time to enjoy my babymoon with my favourite Moranic production…
Blood Shed continues to cook up a storm in the US! Our little sheddy tale of guts and gore has brought us glory the last few weeks, notching up several awards! First, we were stunned to wake up to the news that Blood Shed scooped THREE awards at the prestigious Knoxville Horror Film Fest!
We beat stiff competition to be crowned Funniest Film, and James Moran was named Best Director for a short, and we won Best Script for a short film, too. As Producer, Co-Writer and Production Designer, I’m grinning from ear to ear and thrilled that our rather unique tale has found its place on the film scene so quickly.
The awesome trophies arrived this week and are now adorning the Moranic Productions gong shelves!
And there’s been even more glitz and glory for the film thanks to the amazing Sick Chick Flicks Film Festival in North Carolina!
The festival team kindly picked our star, Shaun Dooley, as the winner of the Best Male Lead Award. Here’s a quick peek at the trophy that is currently en route – what a hot bird! We can’t wait to unwrap this little chick.
Huge thank you to both festivals and their judges, but also to our supporters who helped get this film made and spread the word about it. It’s an honour to share it with so many like-minded shed-fanciers.
We have more screenings coming up. We’re screening at the awesome Ax Wound Film Festival in Vermont on Saturday 18th November, then we’re back in London on home turf for the Underwire Festival 2017 where we’ll be screening at the Prince Charles Cinema on Friday 24th November. Come and show your support if you can. I’m nominated for their Best Producer award and at more than 8 months pregnant, I am extra, extra emotional about this nomination!
In other news, James and I are guests on the latest edition (season 2, ep 7) of the brilliant film podcast Casting the Runes! We were chuffed to chat with the lovely Runes team and had a great time talking about Creepshow and Blood Shed. Have a listen to the episode here! We hope you find the things we say insightful as well as plain odd, weird and strange.
Cat Davies 