Abertoir Horror Festival

TICKETS ON SALE!

2008-10-19T04:04:00.000-07:00

OK folks! Tickets are now on sale, the lineup has been announced on the main website www.abertoir.co.uk and you can call the box office on 01970 623232 to reserve a place.

It's a fabulous credit crunch crunching price of £40 to include the concert by Claudio Simonetti's band DAEMONIA, Doug Bradley's performance in the theatre, over 20 films, and also includes a 10% bar discount!

Head over to abertoir.co.uk for more!

Guest Announced and Schedule Coming Soon

2008-09-03T10:53:00.000-07:00

Well, a lot of money has been spent this year to enable everyone to hopefully have a really good time! We've got some really splendid guests including Doug Bradley, a rare performance by Claudio Simonetti (Goblin) and his band Daemonia, and also director of classic British horror Death Line, Gary Sherman, flying over from the states with a new 35mm print!

There will be well over 20 different films on offer, far more than we have ever done before, and in amongst all of these are some fabulous advance previews, UK premieres, and even a European premiere!

Tickets will be £40 all inclusive (!) which is a phenomenally good credit crunch crunching price, so keep checking our main website www.abertoir.co.uk for the announcement. We expect tickets to be available from Friday 12th September.

Abertoir III - Taking Submissions

2008-01-21T13:38:00.000-08:00

We have the green light for Abertoir III, so are on the lookout for new films to include in our lineup. If you have any feature length independent or mainstream films you would like to get screened, please contact us and we will be happy to consider it. Email cinema(AT)aber.ac.uk and mark ABERTOIR in the subject line. We're looking forward to hearing from you!

Abertoir II in the can....

2007-11-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

Well, it's all over and I would personally like to thank each and every one of you for all your help in making Abertoir a success. I can honestly say that it's been a pleasure chatting with all of you, and thanks in particular to the following people who put time and energy into promoting and helping the festival:
Lloyd Kaufman - Unbelievably nice guy, so much energy, and we think he made more money selling his DVDs than I make in a year! Thanks for coming all the way to Aber!
David Bryant, Sebastian Smith and Richard Stiles for letting us have the UK premiere of Dead Wood.
Julian Richards - For Summer Scars, great film!
Paul Shallcross - For his excellent performance playing for Caligari
Frazer Lee and Joseph Alberti - Always a pleasure, the pubs are looking forward to your next visit
Andrew McQuade - For all your help promoting the festival, thank you!
Justin Richards - For your Italian zombie movie print! What an honour to screen such delightful family entertainment....
Troma Entertainment - For letting us have Lloyd, and being patient waiting for the money!
Gwesty Cymru - For all your help, having a fabulous hotel, and the tasty sausage sandwiches
Jodi Bennet - For helping to spread the word, sorry you couldn't stay for the whole festival
Optimum Releasing - For the advance screening of Mandy Lane
Momentum Pictures - For Planet Terror, thank you SO much!
Mikel Koven - Your support was invaluable over the two years, it's a pleasure to work with you!
and finally Alan Hewson (my boss) for giving the support financially to let me create this five day festival, and for agreeing to get Lloyd here!

For those who are interested, Andrew McQuade has done a small interview with Lloyd Kaufman which is available on youtube. Link here. There was also someone taking pictures, and I will post the link when he makes them available online.

No matter where you came from, it would have been impossible without you. I hope that we can do it again next year, I hope we can get some fabulous guests to Aber, and I hope that you enjoyed yourselves.

See you next year!

Gaz

Accommodation

2007-09-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

Tickets are selling nicely, so if you haven't got any yet, make you do before all are gone!

In the meantime, Andrew McQuade has been kind enough to provide us with an up to date accomodation list, including hotels/B&Bs, distance from the Arts Centre and prices. This can be found here. It's completely up to date and I would recommend using this to start out with.

Tickets Now on Sale

2007-09-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

While we wait for the main website to be updated, I can confirm tickets are now available for booking! Call the main box office on 01970 623232.

Website up and tickets update

2007-08-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

Well, we have our website up at the following address: http://www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/abertoir but the usual www.abertoir.co.uk should forward you to that!

Just hours before we're putting the tickets up for sale, I've heard that we may have to change Lloyd Kaufman's masterclass and screening to a day later, which means in turn reshuffling other films! So, once I get back confirmation from Troma, I will have to change the order of other things and then we can go ahead with the tickets!

Tickets and other things...

2007-08-14T13:43:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like word of mouth is starting to spread, even before we get our official website! So I thought I'd give an update on things in develpment, tickets and so forth. We might have two more guests to add (big names too), but we might not.... we will know more very soon! Official website should be finished soon, and with that, the tickets will be going on sale.

Bearing in mind the cost of other festivals (£60 for Dead by Dawn and £140 for Frightfest) we’re trying to keep our best to keep the pass down to as small as possible to encourage people to come and make it a success, therefore a pass will probably cost you around £27.50 for student, £32.50 adult, but Lloyd Kaufman’s Masterclass will set you back another £8/£9 or so. Individual tickets will cost you £4/£5 so it's really beneficial to buy a pass.

There's two more films that we're waiting on, and I won't mention them now because I don't want to get anyone's hopes up... but we're trying! In other words, we're almost ready. A little bit more tweaking on the times and if we don't hear anything back within a week on the other films, we'll start selling the tickets. For times, we're probably starting around 5pm on Halloween, will have films from the afternoon until midnight/1am for Thurs, Fri and Sat, and run films from midday to 9pm or 10pm on the sunday.

Thanks for all your patience! Help support this festival if you can, tell your friends, and make it a success!

More guests confirmed

2007-08-04T09:16:00.001-07:00

We're happy to announce that director Frazer Lee and producer Joseph Alberti will be here to chat about their new film project URBANE, and explain the ins and outs of actually getting a horror movie off the ground. We expect good things: these guys have already secured Claudio Simonetti for the music, and also Doug Bradley (Pinhead). We will also be screening some of Frazer's wonderful short films, Red Lines and On Edge.

PLANET TERROR - Special Advance Screening!

2007-08-01T10:34:00.001-07:00

With huge thanks to Momentum Pictures for their support, we are honoured to be screening Robert Rodriguez' Planet Terror before it's official UK release.

Good old fashioned, over-the-top schlock horror, Planet Terror tells of a virus that is turning the population into flesh-eating crazies. When a go-go dancer gets her leg bitten off, the only sensible thing seems to attach a machine gun to the stump and blow the living crap out of everyone else!

Mandy Lane - Special Advance Screening

2007-07-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

With the kind assistance of Optimum Releasing, we are very happy to announce a special screening of "All The Boys Love Mandy Lane". Not released until 2008, this will be our closing film.

Synopsis: Mandy Lane, innocent, gorgeous, pure - maybe this weekend one of the teenagers will finally get a chance to sleep with the hottest girl in town. What starts out as a regular teen flick soons turns to good old slasher territory as it becomes clear that only one person gets the girl, and no-one else.....

Author Events

2007-07-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

We have some more horror author events currently being lined up, but for now we are lucky to have the particpation of academic Kate Egan who will launch her new book "Trash or Treasure? Censorship and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasties." Additionally, Jamie Sexton (editor of the Cultographies series) will be here to launch the new range of titles including books on The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Donnie Darko.

Caligari + Live Piano Accompaniment

2007-07-17T05:31:00.000-07:00

Considered to be the first ever horror film, we are happy to announce the kind participation of silent film accompanist Paul Shallcross, who will be playing alongside this special screening!

Asian Horror Double Bill

2007-07-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

We've teamed up with Contender Entertainment to offer an Asian horror double bill - the splendid Thai horror SHUTTER, and from Japan, Takeshi Miike's ONE MISSED CALL. We're going to be running these late at night to deliberately make your journey home as upsetting as possible....

DEAD WOOD + Special Guests...

2007-07-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

We are delighted to announce the addition of DEAD WOOD to our lineup. A new British horror film that is generating great word-of-mouth. Based on an award-winning short (voted for by Lloyd Kaufman at last year's Frightfest!) this will be an extremely early screening and certainly one to look out for. Filmmakers Sebastian Smith, Richard Stiles and David Bryant will be present to chat about their film.

Synopsis: England. The garden of the world, beautiful, quiet, peaceful, safe. This is all about to change as four friends venture out from the city for a relaxing weekend camping in the English wilderness. Here they will discover a dark force of nature, and those that enter its domain will pay with their lives. Dead Wood is the debut from a trio of film makers, Menan Films. A British horror feature that will have you looking over your shoulder next time you take a stroll through the English countryside.

Films So Far......

2007-06-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

There are plenty of exciting, unreleased films that we're trying to get our hands on, but we can't confirm anything yet! To whet your appetite, the films confirmed are:

Poultrygeist - The latest Troma classic guaranteed to offend everyone!
Poltergeist - Not to be confused with the zombie chickens, this is a 35mm print of Tobe Hooper's cult classic to open our festival with.
Hatchet - Brand new "old-school" American horror, with Kane Hodder, Robert England and Tony Todd.
The Raven - Brand new print of this Vincent Price classic.
Twins Of Evil - Hammer Horror, gorgeous vampire twins, Peter Cushing....need we say anymore?
1408 - Stephen King's terrifying new story shows us accomodation far more terrifying than Eli Roth's chain of hostels!
Black Sheep - Where more appropriate than Wales for a film about killer sheep? Imagine "One Man and his Dog" meets "Braindead"....
Deathproof - Tarantino's highly anticipated film will be screening here on Halloween.

We're still working on plenty more films, so keep checking back for updates until the official webpage opens.

LLOYD KAUFMAN!

2007-06-25T14:09:00.000-07:00

We are delighted to announce that Lloyd Kaufman is coming all the way to Abertoir! He will be giving a special masterclass in independent filmmaking, as well as introducing his latest work of sublime beauty, POULTRYGEIST!

The Festival

2007-06-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

This is a temporary site for ABERTOIR, the only horror festival in Wales!

We're currently putting together a great lineup of films and special guests, so keep checking back for updates until the official site goes live.

The festival is based in Aberystwyth Arts Centre and runs from Halloween until Nov 4th 2007. This is our second year, and would never have been possible without the support of the fans who came last year to our launch. Thank you everyone, and see you soon!

Gaz
(Festival Organiser)