Thu 6/20-Sun 6/23

It seems like every aspiring filmmaker kicks off their career by making a horror film  — there must be millions of such efforts out there — so there’s a built-in audience for the 13th annual International Horror Hotel Film Festival, taking place for four days at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Airport this weekend.

There filmmakers, aspiring filmmakers and fans of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and action films can immerse themselves in endless screenings of efforts by both local and internationally noted filmmakers.

The big news is that this year the event has new owners, a consortium of seven local filmmakers with an interest in upping the game.

  “We have decided to start with a bang, bringing known experts from around the nation to Cleveland providing lectures,” say one of the co-managers, Johnny K. Wu, well known for the many action-style films he’s made as well as his activism in the Asia and greater ethnic communities.  “We’ve got two distributors; an Oscar-nominated team member to talk about AI Filmmaking; AI and intellectual properties experts; scriptwriters and directors, as well as cinematographers, the founder of Women of Colors Filmmakers, and of course, visual effects makeup artists and fight choreographers.”

Whew. You’re gonna be busy. The festival got more than 250 submissions, many of which will be filling he two rooms of continuous screenings. There’ll also be a vendor area with purveyors of products relating to film as well as services for filmmakers. And on Saturday at 5pm there’ll be an ceremony honoring the winners of the best films/scripts at the festival, and later that evening, a filmmaker networking event.

Go here for tickets.