Ithaca Fantastic Returns for year 5 To Upstate New York

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For its 5th anniversary, the Ithaca Int’l Fantastic Film Festival got a new name, a new logo, and a new competition series! For the last five years, our team has worked hard to offer our audience, not only movies, but also art exhibits, concerts, and parties. We felt it was time to simplify the excessively long acronym (I.I.F.F.F.), as well as to reflect the diversity of the media we offer. We are returning this fall (from Nov, 9th to 13th) under the new moniker ITHACA FANTASTIK. We hope you dig the change!

As our audience continues to grow each year, we decided to add a new competition series to our program. Our love of cinema always brings us back to its origin: the composition of movement, then captured on camera, and resulting in an imprint on celluloid. A cinema focused on mise en scene and rhythm, a quest for the pure form of moving pictures which avant–garde French artists like Richter, Clair or Léger were already chasing in the early 1920s. We couldn’t be more excited to introduce the Cinema Pur competition series this fall, which takes its name from the French vanguard film movement. It will showcase six movies from young directors using challenging and innovative ways to tell stories in narrative or documentary filmmaking.

As genre fans, we wouldn’t be able to pass on putting together a special program to acknowledge the 35th anniversary of three of the most emblematic werewolves films in cinema: Joe Dante’s THE HOWLING, John Landis’s AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and Michael Wadleigh’s WOLFEN. You can expect surprises and side events—especially since our festival closes on the full moon of November!

For our 5^th Edition, we will dig into your deepest fears with our Retrospective series sponsored by the horror streaming platform SHUDDER! This year’s theme is “The Known Unknowns” which will compile work ranging from Wilde’s mid–60’s visceral masterpiece THE NAKED PREY to Cameron’s action packed sequel ALIENS, and onto Boorman’s ostensive depiction of xenophobia in his 1978 film DELIVERANCE! The full Retrospective line up will be announced in the near future.

Check out our website, Facebook, and Twitter feeds to stay up to date on special events, concerts, and contest announcements in the next few months, as well as the final two Fantastik Fridays of 2016 in September and October.