The MAIN ENTRY DEADLINE is January 15th, 2015

Enter Online or Postmarked by JAN 15th, entry to reach us by JAN 31!
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The 48th Annual WorldFest-Houston - April 10-19, 2015

Ten Great Days in April!

“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 48th Annual WorldFest-Houston International Film & Video Festival is now open for entries! All Winners are submitted to Seoul, Korea, Concorto, Italy & the USAFilmFestival, Dallas at no extra cost!

WorldFest does not get down with Without-A-Box. We remain fiercely independent!

One WorldFest Entry Form per entry please. Complete the form below, then double-check it before submitting to WorldFest. After submitting your entry, you'll be given further instructions, and the option to submit another entry, or submit your payment. Once you've submitted all your entries, you can choose to pay once via Credit Card or PayPal, or send us a check / money order. If you're in the neighborhood, you can also come on into the office and pay with cash.

If you'd like to fill out the traditional paper entry form instead, you can download it here, and mail it in with your entry.

We can't wait to see your work!

The WorldFest 2014 Grand Remi Crystal Awards went to:

• BEST THEATRICAL FEATURE ~ Daydreaming (Sogni di Gloria), Patrizio Gioffredi directing, John Snellingberg Film Collective, Montale, Italy.

• BEST FILM & VIDEO ~ Honor Diaries, Dana Wilsey, Cherry Hill, NJ USA.

• BEST TV & CABLE PRODUCTION ~ Wild Thailand, Kanit Prukprakarn/Peter Ringgaard, GreenAsia/Peter Ringgaard, Denmark.

• BEST COMMERCIAL ~ Giving ~ TRUE MOVE H, Thanonchai Sornsriwichai, Ogilvy & Mather, Thailand.

• BEST NEW MEDIA ~ AXI: Web Series (Avengers of Xtreme Illusions), Shawn Welling ~AXI, Houston, TX, USA.

• BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM & VIDEO ~ Globe Trot, Mitchell Rose, Worthington, Ohio, USA.

• BEST SHORT SUBJECT, Haleema, Boris Schaarschmidt, Heavy B Production, Los Angeles, CA. USA.

• BEST STUDENT FILM, I Remember the Future, Klayton Aaron Stainer, Swinburne University, Preshrank, Victoria, Australia.

• BEST MUSIC VIDEO ~ Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone, Interactive -Vania Heymann, Director, Pulse Films, London, UK.

WorldFest Best Actor Remi Awards went to: Best Actress, Chella Ferrow for African Gothic, Gabriel Bologna, director, South Africa; Best Actor to Nix Xhelilaj for Jamil Dehlavi's Seven Lucky Gods, London, UK; Best Supporting Actress to Olivia "Chachi" Gonzales for The Legend of DarkHorse County, Shawn Welling, director, USA and Best Supporting Actor to Carlton Bluford in Stop Pepper Palmer, Lonzo Liggins director, USA                         

For more information on the 48th 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

WORLDFEST HISTORY

WorldFest was founded over 50 years ago as Cinema Arts, an International Film Society in August, 1961. WorldFest became the third competitive international film festival in North America, following San Francisco and New York. WorldFest is the oldest Independent Film & Video Festival in the World. It evolved into a competitive International Film Festival in April, 1968. It was founded by award-winning producer/director Hunter Todd to present a quality film festival for the Independent filmmakers. Hunter Todd has been honored with more than 115 international awards for creative excellence in film production, and he has been the producer, director, writer and/or cameraman on more than 300 motion picture and video productions. The mission/vision statement of WorldFest is to recognize and honor outstanding creative excellence in film & video, to validate brilliant abilities and to promote cultural tourism for Houston, to develop film production in the region and to add to the rich cultural fabric of the city of Houston. All members of the WorldFest staff are filmmakers.

WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival (now it’s 48th year!) continues with its totally dedicated Independent Film screening format for the upcoming April 10- 19, 2015 unspooling at the flagship AMC Studio 30 Dunvale Theaters. WorldFest will screen just 55-60 feature film premieres, with a complete and absolute emphasis on the American and International Independent feature films and with a continuing annual spotlight on an individual country and its films. WorldFest also offers competition in TV Production, Documentary, Corporate & Business Films, Student & Experimental, TV Commercials, Film & Video Production, Music Videos, New Media (Interactive, Web Sites & 3D Productions), Screenplays, Print and Radio.

WorldFest is one of the oldest and largest film & video competitions in the world, with more than 4,500 category entries received from 37 countries in 2006. Actually WorldFest is 12 Major film & video competitions in one event, unlike Cannes, Sundance and Toronto, which are just 2 competitions for shorts and features only. Because of our 12 major competitions and the 200+ sub-categories, WorldFest does give a lot of awards, but they are both earned and deserved. No awards are given in any category unless the scores from the juries are high enough to place for honors. Overall only 15-20% of the total category entries actually win an award at WorldFest. However, everyone attending the Grand Awards Gala wins an award, as we only invite the actual winners, which makes for a delightful and enjoyable evening, since there are no disappointed “nominees” that do not win anything. Those that do not win an award are informed by email or letters prior to the festival.

WorldFest Artistic and Program Director Kathleen Haney stated, “We feel that it is impossible to properly emphasize individual films when the festival screening schedule is too large. We must consider both our festival audience and our independent filmmakers. A huge slate of 150-300 films cannot possibly do justice to each individual film. Further, it is impossible to see more than 50-60 films (with four shows a day) in a ten-day festival, so it is foolish to program more than that.” Haney continued, “We will concentrate on only the very best, selecting new American & Foreign Independent films that truly deserve a premiere at WorldFest. By doing so, we can concentrate on the films and their filmmakers and enable our faithful audience the opportunity to see each and every film!” All 35mm films and Digital entries are screened at the AMC Meyer Park Theatre, WorldFest – the Indie Film Festival for the New Millennium!

In addition to honoring a different country each year, WorldFest will continue with its annual Short Film Showcase, a special review of 100+ new short and student films…from the festival that discovered Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Ang Lee, John Lee Hancock, Randall Kleiser, Ridley Scott, Robert Rodriguez, Robert Townsend, The Coen Brothers, Spike Lee, Oliver Stone and David Lynch with their very first awards. WorldFest has emerged as the oldest film festival management in the world, with the same continuous director for 39 consecutive years. A few other festivals are older, but they have had as many as ten different directors. WorldFest is uniquely the only film festival in North America that is staffed and managed totally by filmmakers. All staff members have active film and video production experience, which gives them a very unique point of reference in relation to the entering filmmakers and their work. WorldFest, founded in 1961, is the oldest Independent film festival in the world, and the 3rd oldest film festival in North America.

Most USA Film Festivals today have emerged as no more than unpaid publicity agents for major studio distributors. WorldFest continues to move forward to present the true independent film and its filmmaker, offering a new venue for directors searching for an independent forum for their works. WorldFest will have a special emphasis on new, premiering films that are seeking a distributor. The Festival also screens DVD video via Wagner Media & Christie DLP Digital Projection, one of the major sponsors of the festival.

By having a small, highly selective schedule of new Indie Short & Feature films, the festival can help the film gain reviews and a distributor, rather than merely act as a preview platform for an upcoming release from a large US distributor. Most of the so-called ‘Independent Films’ featured at Sundance are quite frequently fairly large-budget films produced by special “Indie” divisions of the major studios. In fact, the majority of films featured at Sundance and other “Indie” Festivals actually already have their distribution in place. The 120-page WorldFest program book is distributed free of charge to the public, all attending filmmakers, all studios and every major film festival in the world and to every known major film & video distributor in the world. The WorldFest program book has become an invaluable reference document for film acquisition and review.

“Small is Beautiful” for the 40th Annual WorldFest, where simplicity is the byword, and a relaxed intimate atmosphere surrounds a special selection of superb new feature and short films. The opportunities for networking and contacts are exceptional. The detailed 120+ page program book & schedule features a special grid-guide for the film-buffs that will assist them in viewing all the films. Seminars include Cinematography, Casting, Distribution, Directing/Producing, Writing and more.

Among the remarkable number of WorldFest discoveries, we include just a few, listed in alphabetical order: John Alvidson, John Badham, Ralph Bakshi, Carroll Ballard, John Boorman, Marty Brest, Michael Cimino, The Coen Brothers, Bryan De Palma, Jonathan Demme, Michael Demme, Atom Egoyan, John Frankenheimer, Leslie Linka Glatter, Charles Guggenheim, John Lee Hancock, Hal Hartley, Randall Kleiser, Ang Lee, Spike Lee, George Lucas, David Lynch, Paul Mazursky, Steve Poster, Robert Rodriguez, John Sayles, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Robert Townsend, Will Vinton, Peter Weir, Hugh Wilson and hundreds more. The winners this year will be the Spielbergs of tomorrow and you can meet them before they are famous. WorldFest-Houston…”Fiercely Independent” WorldFest is one of the oldest film festivals in the world, founded in 1961 as a film society.