Schedule for the Day:

1.00pm-3.00- Short Film Competition.

3.00-3.20-Short break

3.20-4.00- Short film awards.

4.00-5.00- Break

5.00-7.00- The Pocket FIlm Of Superstitions (Plus QA)

7.00-8.00- Break

8.00-9.30-The WitchFinder General.

This is the second Pompeywood Film Festival for Genre Filmakers to take place.

The festival was started in 2022 by local film company TrashArts and indie producers HB Films(https://www.hbfilms.co.uk/pompeywood-film-festival/). The Festival is described as ‘genre focused’ and as Festival Director Sam Mason Bell explains “TrashArts is mainly known for making horror films, as well as other arts activities including open mic nights at local community venues, so we wanted to create a film festival that focussed on the horror genre but also other fantastical genres from scifi to comedy”.

This year's theme will be a celebration of British folk horror.

We will be showing the new Tom Lee Rutter feature “The Pocket Film of Superstitions”, a film described as “a weird and wonderful merging of shades of folk horror, the supernatural with dadaist humour and a quaint British eccentricities that are long gone in the cinema of today”. It stars the scream queen legend Caroline Munro (“The Abominable Dr.Phibes”, “The Spy Who Loved Me”, “Maniac”).

And our main feature presentation will be the classic “The Witchfinder General” (1968) starring horror icon Vincent Price. This beloved film follows “a young soldier seeking to put an end to the evils caused by a vicious witch-hunter when the latter terrorises his fiancée and kills her uncle”.

Pompeywood is also hosting a competition for short films (both Horror and Non-Horror) and trailers.

“The ethos of the Pompeywood film festival is to encourage as many filmmakers as possible to submit their short films for screening and so entry fees have been kept very low and the ticket prices for the screening sessions will also be kept as low as possible. We aim to encourage filmmakers from across the UK and the world to submit their work but there is a special focus on local films from Hampshire”

We have had a large number of submissions and the finalists will be chosen on August 20th. The winners will be announced on the day, with awards for the best performance, best film, best sound, and best trailer amongst others. One of the final awards to be decided will be the ‘Audience Choice Best Film’.