Bulletin Board

The DEADLINE is extended to January 31st, 2014

“FORGET SUNDANCE! …WorldFest is one of the best conceived festival productions on the planet!” ~ Craig Outhier, film critic, Phoenix press; Tempe Times.

MovieMaker Magazine picks WorldFest as one of the 50 Festivals Worldwide Worth The Entry Fee!

The 47^th Annual WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival continues its totally dedicated Independent Film screening format for the upcoming April 04-13, 2014 unspooling. WorldFest will screen just 55-60 feature film premieres, with a total and absolute emphasis on the American and International Independent feature films and a continuing annual spotlight on award-winning short films and documentary films. Entry forms (Now Online!) & complete entry information are on our website (www.worldfest.org) – Click on Enter Film Festival, then on History, FAQ, Categories, Entry Form… The EarlyBird Entry Deadline is Friday, Nov. 15^th 2013 – A Mail-By Ship-By Deadline! Entries do not have to arrive by this deadline. The late Entry Deadline is now extended to January 31st, 2014.

WorldFest Artistic and Program Director, Kathleen Haney, stated, “We are fiercely dedicated to the Indie Feature and Short Film and look for a quality selection of individual films to maintain a smaller, yet effective program rather than an overly large and unwieldy slate of 150-300 films. Haney continued, “For the 2014 WorldFest we continue to use ‘A good story, well told’ as our time-tested approach to film selection”. (For complete winner info from the past 2013 WorldFest, go to – http://www.worldfest.org  – click on View the 2013 Remi Winners).

After he received the WorldFest Grand Remi Award, Ridley Scott commented “WorldFest is in the business of validating excellence!” The mission of WorldFest is to recognize and validate creative excellence in film & video production in every facet and category of filmmaking. Many filmmakers report that a Remi Award from WorldFest opens doors to advance their careers.

WorldFest will continue with its annual Short Film Showcase, a special review of 100 new short and student films...from the festival that gave first top honors to Spielberg, Lucas, The Coen Brothers, Ridley Scott, Robert Rodriguez, Spike Lee, Gavin Hood, John Lee Hancock, Michael Cimino, Leslie Linka Glatter, Oliver Stone, Ang Lee, Atom Egoyan and David Lynch, among many others! Few other festivals have such a “Discovery” track record. WorldFest has emerged as the oldest continuous film festival management in the world with the same executive director, serving for 46 consecutive years. A few other festivals are older, but they have had as many as ten different directors. It is the oldest film festival in The South, and the 3^rd oldest International Film/Video Festival in North America, after San Francisco & NYC.

The 46^th Annual WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival concluded with a good 20% upturn in box office. Highlights of the 46^th Annual WorldFest-Houston were: several hit films, a Gala Awards Banquet with top honors presented to up-and-coming attending filmmakers from over 35 countries from round the globe, Indie Panels, a VIP tour of NASA and an exciting Houston Yacht Club Sailing Regatta & Texas BBQ. Attendance at the 10-day Fest was over 25,000, up from 2012 box office figures. The overflowing Awards Dinner at Houston’s Hotel Marriott Westchase hosted the WorldFest Gala, on Saturday night (April 20) with a record number of more than 650 international filmmakers, award winning international Russian & Mexican dancers, and a special hi-energy dance presentation by Shawn Welling’s ELCX Planet Funk.

The WorldFest 2013 Grand Remi Statuette Awards went to:

• BEST THEATRICAL FEATURE ~ First Dog, USA, directed by Bryan Michael Stoller, and First American Cinema, Ca. Bryan a longtime WorldFest alumni personally accepted the award along with Canadian producer, Gary Bosloy, and main attraction, Little Bear. the four-legged star of the show.
• BEST FILM & VIDEO ~ Flight of the Butterflies, directed by Mike Slee, SK Films, Canada
• BEST TV & CABLE PRODUCTION ~ Icarus’s Dream directed by Hyoung-Woon, Kim of the Korean Broadcasting System, Seoul, S. Korea
• BEST NEW MEDIA ~ Avengers of Xtreme Illusions, Shawn Welling, Welling Films, Hous., TX, USA
• BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM & VIDEO ~ Red Tulips, A Story About Forgetting, director, producer, writer, Lucida Films, LLC, Brooklyn, NY.
• BEST SHORT SUBJECT ~ The Memory Sculptor, Ken Ochiai, Photosynth Entertainment, La.Ca.
• BEST STUDENT FILM ~ Hoe Kan Ik U Helpen, Wooter Wiggeleer, Ledeberg, Ghent, Belgium
• BEST TELEVISION COMMERCIAL ~ Paul Harvey, “The Farmer”- Dodge Ram, The Richards Group, Dallas, TX.
• BEST MUSIC VIDEO ~ Stax – The Early Years, API Photographers, Inc., Memphis, TN.

Other top winners this year at WorldFest included Special Jury Award honors to: Moroccan/French filmmaker Ben Souda, for feature film Behind Closed Doors (Derriere les Portes Fermes); The Mystical Laws (Shinpi-No-Hou), Isamu Imakake (Cowboy Bebop); Sebastian Grobler’s Der Ganz Grosse Traum; Bryan Ramirez’s Mission Park, an FBI drama; Benoy, Badal & Denish with Houston producer Ash Shah on hand to accept; The Sorrows with Arty Papageorgiou & Phoebe Gittins jetting in from New Zealand to accept and Lost for Words by WorldFest alums, Stanley and Maria Orzel here from Hong Kong to accept.

            WorldFest Best Actor Remi Awards go to Bretten Lord in Lad: A Yorkshire Story, UK.; Best Actress, Emma Vilarasau in Unknown Number (Desclassificats), Catalan/Spain; Best Supporting Actor, Alan Gibson in Lad: A Yorkshire Story, UK and Best Supporting Actress, Priscilla Barnes in First Dog, USA.

            The Russian-American Publication sponsored the Best Foreign Film Award and presented by Olga Tarasova went to multi-winner, Uncle Hank from Stetz Film, The Netherlands, directed by Elbert van Strien with writer Bert Bouma on hand to accept.

The Best Houston Production Remi Award went to Naomi Warren – A Story of Hope and Renewal, Leslie Sachnowitz Meimoun Squareone Communications, Houston, TX.  The Best Texas Production Award went to Shawn Welling’s The Legend of DarkHorse County, Welling Productions, Houston, Texas.

WorldFest began in August 1961, as Cinema Arts, an International Film Society. It began screening Independent, foreign & art films. It became an officially competitive International Film Festival seven years later, in April 1968, and has been in continuous operation since. It is one of the original three film festivals in North America, with San Francisco and New York as the first two events. Following WorldFest was Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, and Seattle. Then Sundance and SXSW, Toronto and Tribeca. Now there are more than 2,000 USA film festivals of various types, levels and quality, most being simply non-competitive screening events! WorldFest is international, competitive and invites filmmakers worldwide.

The 47th Annual WorldFest offers International Competition in; Features, Shorts, TV production, TV commercials, unproduced Screenplays & Teleplays, Experimental, Student, Documentary, Business & Industry, New Media, and Music Videos. WorldFest is the largest film & video competition in the world, in sheer number of actual category entries, with more than 4,300 category entries received in 2013. There are almost 200 sub-categories for competition, allowing each film to compete in its own individual genre.

WorldFest-Houston is sponsored by the State of Texas, the City of Houston, HBU Fitness Center, Kodak, NASA, AMC Theaters, Tippit and Moo, Service, Inc., Premier IMS, the Houston Film Commission, Boxer Properties, Wagner Media, The HQ Hotel Marriott Westchase, The Houston Chronicle, Regent University Film School and the Houston Arts Alliance (HAA).

 For more information on the 47th Annual 2014 WorldFest-Houston, send your name and address to:

Entry Team WorldFest - 2014
PO Box 56566, Houston, Texas 77256-6566 USA
or call toll free: 1-866-965-9955 (or 713-965-9955) or fax: 1-713-965-9960

or simply email us at: entry@worldfest.org

The complete Entry Kit with Entry Forms - is on our website: https://www.worldfest.org

(The 47th Annual WorldFest-Houston is April 04-13, 2014) -  Ver. 09.22.2013