Portsmouth filmmakers putting the city on the movie map with first Pompeywood Film Festival

The first Pompeywood Film Festival is due to take place at The Groundlings Theatre across the weekend of Saturday and Sunday, October 22-23.

It is the brainchild of the well-known local filmmaker and festival director, Sam Mason Bell and is organised by TrashArts Productions in partnership with HB Films.

Sam said: ‘TrashArts is mainly known for making horror films, as well as other arts activities including open mic nights at local community venues, so we wanted to create a film festival that focussed on that specific genre, but was also open to entries for other film genres.

‘I’ve been lucky to meet a lot of awesome independent filmmakers when I’ve been to other festivals around the country, so I wanted to create something that would be about showcasing those sorts of films and getting people to come to Portsmouth so they can see what a great city this is. It should be a great networking event as well.’

The festival will be showing a number of feature films across the weekend, including work from the Portsmouth-based cult film maker Michael J Murphy who died in 2015. Murphy’s work is about to be celebrated in a major box set retrospective, but Pompeywood will have a rare screening of his 1982 horror Invitation to Hell.

Sam added: ‘His films were made in a time when filmmaking by small, unfunded, independent filmmakers was considerably harder than it is now, so we want to use the festival to highlight his work as well as the great films being made today’.

Other screenings include Beyond Fury directed by Darren Ward, Mask Of The Devil by Richard Roundtree, In The Dark by Sam Mason Bell and India Kim, and Powertool Cheerleaders vs The Boyband of the Screeching Dead by Pat Higgins.

In The Dark, Sam’s own film, with co-director India Kim, is an anthology documentary about other filmmakers. ‘Given the idea behind the festival, it seemed appropriate to show that rather than one of my narrative films,’ Sam added.

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Besides the screenings there will also be a short film competition in horror, non-horror and trailer categories.

Festival administrator Martin W Payne said: ‘The ethos of the Pompeywood film festival is to encourage as many filmmakers as possible to submit their short films for screening and so entry fees have been kept very low and the ticket prices for the screening sessions will also be kept as low as possible.

‘We aim to encourage filmmakers from across the UK and the world to submit their work but there is a special focus on local films from Hampshire.’

The winners will be announced on the Sunday evening, with awards for the best performance, best film, best sound, and best makeup among others. One of the final awards to be decided will be the Audience Choice Best Film.

Tickets cost from £5 for a session, £8 each day or £15 for the whole weekend, and are available by calling (023) 9273 7370 or from groundlings.ticketsolve.com.