Beijing Filmmakers Craft Frights on a Shoestring for Rock Against Horror Film Fest
Whether you digest it via the news, video games, books, and most importantly, movies, the love for all things horror seems to run in our DNA – our lizard brains can’t help but be drawn to it. That seems particularly true in film, where our fears are confronted on-screen through atrocities and carnage, to the point where we'll watch on even if it means peeking through our fingers. Better yet, horror movies love company; whether it’s staying up late with your brother to watch giant ants terrorize citizens in Them! or gathering a group of 12-year-olds to watch Jason Goes to Hell, squirming and recoiling – witnessing terror is simply a pastime better done with friends.
Now in its third year running, the Rock Against Horror Film Festival continues its ambitions to extend that bonding-through-fright ideology to behind the camera, gathering a ragtag team of directors, actors, and crew to put together eight films on a shoestring budget. Covering a whole range of 'spooky topics and tropes,' this year's entrants will be shown at Temple Bar this Sunday, Nov 3, followed by a special director’s cut edition screening on Tuesday, Nov 5 at El Nido.
Host and founder of the competition, Michael Marshall, tells the Beijinger how Rock Against Horror Film Festival arises out of his love of "classic, low budget horror films," adding, "there's a sort of magic in the creative problem-solving in old school practical effects that retain a certain charm decades later, like an average-sized Japanese man in a Godzilla suit trashing a tiny model city (or) Alfred Hitchcock’s sound team stabbing at a sirloin steak and a melon to approximate the sound of stabbing flesh for Psycho – that stuff is always great."
That charm shines through in first-time director and Chinese film student Tong Zhen'an AKA Yourong's entry Tomato Rock, which through a particular (and peculiar) mood paints its horror in broader strokes. "It is more like a feeling and how tomato and rock music can be related. It is not possible in the real world and not in literature, but it is possible in film, by image and sound."
Sound small-scale? That's because it is. Marshall’s love for low-budget horror is evident in one of the festival’s constraints: being able to film on an air-tight RMB 500 budget. A challenge for some for sure, but filmmaker, drama instructor, and writer Da Han, who is participating for his third year in a row (making for the festival’s first sequel, Dank Frank), views the budget as the "best way to get in shape as a filmmaker and become accustomed to making more with less."
“It helps maintain a sense of reality within reason as there was no way we were shooting out of town or buying things other than maybe food, taxi fare, and fake blood... and if we had anything left, maybe one pizza. Because even when you have an actual budget, it’ll never ever be enough," Da Han adds.
It’s the diversity behind and in front of the camera that’s most exciting to Marshall, who says he's increasingly blindsided by the enthusiasm surrounding the festival, with participants contacting him as early as spring about submissions. "I'm surprised it took this long, but for the first time, someone pulled a Blair Witch and used an actual local 'haunted' setting to shoot their film. That was brave. We have more women involved in both behind the camera and in front of the camera roles too. Overall the quality of films, cinematography, and narratives has only increased."
Whether you're a horror film enthusiast or simply someone looking for a little fright (and some low-budget kicks) this Halloween, you're in for a treat, or as Da Han points out, "The true horror stories we now have come from the challenge of making a film with a near-zero budget. That’s priceless."
The third annual Rock Against Horror Film Festival takes place this Sunday, Nov 3 at 8pm at Temple Bar. A special Director's Cut night will also take place at El Nido on Tuesday, Nov 5 at 7.30pm. Both events are free.
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Images courtesy of the organizers