Fandance Film Festival

Norwescon 37: Elegance and Entropy | April 17-20, 2014

The Show

The Fifteenth Annual Fandance Film Festival: It’s small, geeky, and very, very fun!

The Shine

Forget about the tuxedo, the parachute, and the collagen injections–this is a film festival you can have fun at!

Welcome to the Fifteenth Annual Fandance Film Festival, hosted at Norwescon 37! Fifteen years of madness, filmmaking, and of seeing all the latest, greatest, funniest, weirdest, and most bleeding, squealing, giant smashing roboting edge entertainment still available without extensive tipping (mind you, we’re not saying no…). The festival is a celebration of low- and no-budget cinema, brought to wondrous lurching life by amateur filmmakers from all around the Pacific Northwest.

More than just the movies, this 180-minute extravaganza of entertainment will also include the filmmakers who regale you with terrifying tales of their productions. Be there or be a regular right quadrilateral!

The Fandance Film Festival is also the final phase of the Let’s Make a Movie! workshop. The Workshop walks participants through every step of making a movie, from conception to the premiere of the finished product. This year at Norwescon also marks the fifteen-year anniversary of the Let’s Make a Movie! workshop.

The Pitch

The integral part of this is, of course, the movies. We need ‘em! The shorter, the better (ten minutes maximum length–no minimum length) and any genre is fine (but if you’re smart, you’ll realize that this is a sci-fi/fantasy type convention) but the judges reserve the right to be way grossed out by what they see. We reserve other rights as well (including not showing something), but we can’t spell them out here and if you tried pronouncing them your tongue would become a macramé Klein bottle and there’s no two ways about that!

The Rules

  1. It really ought to be ten minutes or less. We’re flexible about this, but it’s got to be good. “Long” is not a synonym for “good.”

  2. Send a DVD copy of your short. Something that can be played in an ordinary DVD player–and check it before you send it, to make sure it’s readable. We’re not responsible.

  3. You must be a member of Norwescon, and preferably at the convention that weekend. We’ll probably call you out or call you up for a Q&A at the end of your movie and/or an intro. Plan ahead.

  4. Include include your contact info (email, phone, etc.). If we don’t have your contact info, we can’t contact you.

  5. Include a signed and dated statement declaring, “I release all rights to broadcast/display/present this movie to Norwescon for the purposes of the Fandance Film Festival and other supporting situations/advertisement ONLY, including the right to duplicate it for mechanical/projection purposes.”

  6. There is no entry fee for the film festival, but you DO have to be at the convention legally, so that costs a little. However, if you’ve never been to Norwescon before, it’s a total treat and well worth the cost. Assuming you’re some kind of geek. Which you are, if you’ve gotten this far.

  7. The submission deadline is April 1, 2014. If you can’t make the deadline, at least contact us. Maybe we can work something out. If you show up at the convention with a movie in hand, don’t expect much.

  8. The “Fan” refers to Fandom and such–not to big air-moving tools. In other words, we won’t do a fan dance on stage. Besides, you don’t want that anyway.

The 10-9

The submissions deadline is April 1, and because Norwescon is so close to that, we’re serious about it — but that’s still nearly a month of time you can spend making movies…

…and if you’ve seen the kind of amazing movies we can make in a weekend, just IMAGINE what you can do in a month!

Send submissions to:

The Fandance Film Festival
c/o Hellbender Media/Guerrilla Productions
11105 SW Cottonwood Lane
Tigard, OR 97223

Any questions, contact us through Hellbender Media!