Indiewire reports that Kelly Reichardt’s partially Kickstarter-funded, newly restored version of RIVER OF GRASS picked for prestigious TIFF Cinematheque. Fessenden stars alongside Lisa Bowman in this 1994 film.

From the Indiewire release:

In addition to its stellar slate of new titles and emerging talent, the Toronto International Film Festival is dedicated to paying respect to the cinema — and masters — that have come before the latest and greatest in contemporary film talent. As part of the initiative, the festival boasts two unique programs — TIFF Cinematheque, which focuses on previously released classics, and Masters of Cinema, which features new films from, well, masters of cinema — and both sections have now revealed their slate for the 2015 festival.

“We believe that cinema has a rich heritage that must be protected, celebrated and preserved for current and future generations. This year’s TIFF Cinematheque lineup highlights our commitment to both preservation and restoration,” said TIFF programmer Brad Deane. “We’re thrilled to present some of the best new digital restorations along with some beautiful new 35mm prints, embracing both the future of the medium as well as the past.”

Standouts in the TIFF Cinematheque program include a new digital restoration of Julian Roffman’s “The Mask (Eyes of Hell),” Barbara Kopple’s debut documentary “Harlan County, USA” and a restored version of Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies.” Miklós Jancsó’s “The Round-Up” is also a part of the lineup, along with a partially Kickstart-ed restoration of Kelly Reichardt’s “River of Grass.” The Masters of Cinema section includes new films from Wim Wenders, Jafar Panahi, Hong Sang-soo, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Philippe Garrel and many, many more.

Films screening as part of the TIFF Cinematheque and Masters of Cinema programs are listed below. The festival runs September 10 – 20.

TIFF Cinematheque

“Adieu Philippine,” Jacques Rozier, France/Italy

“Harlan County, USA,” Barbara Kopple, USA

“The Mask (Eyes of Hell),” Julian Roffman, Canada

“The Memory of Justice,” Marcel Ophüls, United Kingdom/USA/Germany

“River of Grass,” Kelly Reichardt, USA

“Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i Suoi Fratelli),” Luchino Visconti, Italy

“The Round-Up (Szegénylegények),” Miklós Jancsó, Hungary

“Titicut Follies,” Frederick Wiseman, USA

Masters of Cinema

“11 Minutes (11 Minut),” Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland/Ireland, North American Premiere

“The Assassin (Nie Yinniang),” Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan, North American Premiere

“Bleak Street (La calle de la amargura),” Arturo Ripstein, Mexico/Spain, North American Premiere

“Blood Of My Blood (Sangue Del Mil Sangue),” Marco Bellocchio, Italy, International Premiere

“Cemetery of Splendour (Rak Ti Khon Kaen),” Apichatpong Weerasethakul, North American Premiere, Thailand/United Kingdom/France/Germany/Malaysia

“Every Thing Will Be Fine,” Wim Wenders, Germany/Canada/France/Sweden/Norway, North American Premiere

“Francofonia,” Alexander Sokurov, Germany/France/Netherlands, North American Premiere

“In the Shadow of Women,” Philippe Garrel, France, North American Premiere

“Jafar Panahi’s Taxi,” Jafar Panahi, Iran, Canadian Premiere

“Our Little Sister (Umimachi Diary),” Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, North American Premiere

“The Pearl Button (El Botón de Nácar),” Patricio Guzmán, Chile/France/Spain, North American Premiere

“Rabin, The Last Day,” Amos Gitaï, Israel/France, North American Premiere

“Right Now, Wrong Then,” Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, North American Premiere

Fessenden executive produces ENTERTAINMENT, the new film from Rick Alverson, director of THE COMEDY. Check out the trailer below, and catch it in theaters and on iTunes November 13th.

4th Act Film Collective, a new cinema blog, just posted an in-depth retrospective on Fessenden’s HABIT. Written by Craig Ian Mann, the piece is part review/part remembrance.

From ‘Death and Drink: Remembering Larry Fessenden’s Habit’:

Dir: Larry Fessenden

Glass Eye Pix, US, 1995

Starring: Larry Fessenden, Meredith Snaider, Aaron Beall

“Actually, I’m committing suicide on the instalment plan.”

If you haven’t heard Larry Fessenden’s name, it’s pretty likely you’ve seen his face; the king of the horror cameo, Fessenden has popped up in everything from Session 9 to The Strain, via You’re Next, the American remake of We Are What We Are and a frankly surreal appearance in Jodie Foster starring vigilante film The Brave One. Recently, Fessenden has taken meatier acting roles in I Sell the Dead, We Are Still Here and Pod, which is currently showing on the horror festival circuit. As a producer – and head honcho at independent powerhouse Glass Eye Pix – Fessenden has been responsible for nurturing some of the finest modern writers and directors of genre films, including Ti West, Jim Mickle, Nick Damici and Glenn McQuaid. For the last five years, Fessenden and McQuaid have also been single-handedly reviving the lost art of the radio play with Tales From Beyond the Pale, an auditory horror experience like no other. With so many projects moving at once, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that Fessenden is also the talented writer-director of several feature films, including No Telling, Wendigo, The Last Winter and Beneath, all of which have their individual charms and interesting social commentary to make. But in a career full of achievements spanning over thirty-five years, 2015 marks the 20th anniversary of Fessenden’s stand-out film: the haunting vampire opus Habit.

Sam (Fessenden) is a spiralling alcoholic New Yorker. Still recovering from the shock of his father’s sudden death and in the midst of a break-up from long-term girlfriend Liza (Heather Woodbury), Sam is looking forward to the freedom of single life: to be able to do (i.e. drink) what he wants, when he wants. He is, in his own words, “committing suicide on the instalment plan.” While he has friends, – chiefly Nick (Aaron Beall) and Rae (Patricia Coleman) – they are not exactly approving of his self-destructive behaviour. That’s when he meets Anna (Meredith Snaider) at a Halloween party, a mysterious and alluring woman who may or may not be a vampire. Sam and Anna embark on a fairly unorthodox union; he never sees her in daylight, and she is prone to biting during their aggressive sexual encounters. All of this seems very acceptable to Sam: a passionate, exciting relationship that comes without the bonds of commitment. But then he starts to fall dangerously ill, and Sam wonders if Anna’s love might come at a hidden cost.

Written, directed and edited by Fessenden, Habit is a truly sad, mesmerising and ultimately brilliant film about addiction, urban alienation and, yes, vampirism. But despite its inherent genre trappings, a documentary aesthetic – reminiscent of George A. Romero’s Martin – lends Habit a certain sense of realism. This is a beautiful if depressing snapshot of New York in the mid-1990s; a place where anything seems possible, but it is all too easy to get lost amongst the neon and noise. The film’s naturalism only renders its artistic flourishes more effective; Fessenden often cuts away from his characters, laying the soundtrack of their poignant dialogue over a montage of New York’s late-night city streets. And when the film does become truly surreal, – such as a scene that may or may not be a dream sequence in which Anna, withered and rotting, visits Sam in the middle of a fitful sleep – Habit’s grainy, choppily edited style only renders these moments all the more terrifying.

And Habit is terrifying. Perhaps it is not frightening in a way we might traditionally expect of a horror film – there are no jump scares here, and only a few scenes genuinely designed to shock. Instead, it is a chilling portrait of self-destruction. Fessenden’s is the stand-out performance; a realistic, unnerving portrait of a spiral into the abyss brought to life by a man who has clearly witnessed the devastating results of addiction first hand. And it is his ascent into the bottle that is really at the heart of Habit’s horror. A debate exists as to whether Anna is or is not a literal vampire but, honestly, the answer doesn’t matter; the true blood-sucker here is alcohol, a substance that slowly drains the life from Sam until he is a husk of his former self with nothing left to do but drink himself to death. Snaider’s uncaring vamp is simply along for the ride.

That is not to say that Habit doesn’t contain plenty of generic touches for the discerning fan of the vampire film; but they are subtle moments, designed to pay homage to the classics of the sub-genre. Fessenden plays with mirrors, placing them at frustrating angles so that we can never see if Anna casts a reflection; she waits at Sam’s door to be invited before she crosses the threshold into his flat; later, she won’t enter when he is cooking a meal laced heavily with garlic. One of the film’s most memorable and disquieting scenes sees Sam sitting alone, the life almost beaten out of him, licking blood from the bottom of a meat container. And the film has a body count – albeit a small one – that suggests Sam is not the only unfortunate soul who has fallen prey to Anna’s charms.

Taken as a horror film, a human drama or a complicated mixture of both, Habit is a disquieting tale of urban isolation, loss and alcohol dependency. It was clearly a story that possessed Fessenden – enough that he made the film twice. The original version of Habit was shot on video in 1982 before he chose to remake it on film in the early 1990s. It premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1995 and saw a brief theatrical release in 1997 before sadly slipping into relative obscurity in more recent years. It is now largely unknown; a truly tragic loss, as Habit is one of horror cinema’s more unique, interesting and metaphorically complex achievements and certainly one of the greatest independent genre films of the 1990s. Scream Factory will release Habit on Blu-ray later this year as part of The Larry Fessenden Collection (also including No Telling, Wendigo and The Last Winter), but sadly the release will be region locked. We can only hope that a UK distributor will follow suit; Habit is a hidden gem that deserves to rise from the grave.

– Craig Ian Mann

Mickey Keating’s DARLING, produced by Glass Eye Pix, starring Lauren Ashley Carter (JUG FACE, THE WOMAN, upcoming THE MIND’S EYE), will have its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest! Hollywood Reporter announced the news today, and the Fantastic Fest site has more details on the movie:

In DARLING, a young woman takes a seemingly simple job as the caretaker for an enormous, historical New York home. In fact, as she’s picking up the keys, the lady who hired her mentions that it’s the oldest home in New York. And with that age comes several stories… and then there was that incident with the caretaker. When the young woman asks what happened, the lady begrudgingly admits that the he committed suicide, but they don’t know why and “it’s nothing to worry about. Nothing like that could ever happen again.” With that, the woman is out the door, leaving the young lady with a check and the first pangs of anxiety about her latest career move. But with no other choice, she resigns herself to her decision, and starts to look around. She discovers an odd necklace with an upside down cross as well as a single locked door at the end of a short hallway. Both are strangely ominous, just like the odd noises she hears at night. When she finds herself frightened by an innocuous encounter with a man on the street, she starts to slowly spiral out of control.

Mickey Keating returns to Austin hot on the heels of the SXSW premiere of his film POD. Filmed in black and white with disorienting sequences of fast edits, DARLING feels nightmarish with a thick atmosphere of fear and apprehension that calls to mind elements of REPULSION. Lauren Ashley Carter, who fans will recognize from JUG FACE as well as POD, stars as the main character and perfectly portrays a descent into madness. Punctuated by heightened sound effects and a score that’s constantly evolving to drive the tension, DARLING is a dark, unsettling experience filled with dread and the constant threat of impending doom. (Luke Mullen)

Monday night saw the first international performance of TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, with special guests including Jeremy Gardner and Tony Todd! Check out Twitch’s review along with some pics from the evening below!

TALES Directors Fessenden, McQuaid, Buck with Fantasia’s Mitch Davis

From TwitchFilm.com:

It was not looking good my friends. A couple of us just got out of our last screening for the day at Fantasia and were about to hoof it down to a local comedy club for the first ever international presentation of Tales From Beyond the Pale when we looked outside.

The heavens had opened up in an attempt to dissuade us from travelling to our destination to taint our ears with devilish linguistic largess. God was opposed to our desires and his rage translated into forks of lightning across the Montreal skyline. And it almost worked. We fled underground and arose at the other theater thinking we would have to resort to more cinema when God let up his guard. The rains ceased. The ankle high tidal waves slowed to mere puddles.

I’m not saying that there was a dove with an olive branch but we took it as a sign that God was distracted and looking the other way so we made our move and booked it before He knew what we had done. Let our children bear the punishments for our sins. We were going out for libations both spiritual and supernatural.

As stated before we made it our mission to bear witness to the first ever international presentation of the live radio show Tales From Beyond the Pale. As we were entering the club a Fantasia staff member and horror filmmaker himself said that he caught the show at Stanley Film Festival and that he watched the show for the first play and then closed his eyes for the remaining shows. Because that really is what radio plays were, theaters of the mind.

So rather than jostle for a seat closer to the stage we took up reserved seating at the bar at the back of the room. Why? Because I was on the guest list because that is how I frakking roll at Fantasia.

And it was seating at the frakking bar. The less you have to move to get drinks the more time you have to drink.

We could still make out the manic manipulations of the show’s creator Larry Fessenden as he added some physicality to his performance in the second show. And we could just make out The Battery’s Jeremy Gardner making out with his hand during the third act. We left the rest of night’s workload up to our ears, and our livers.

What was old is new again. The radio shows that previous generations would entertain themselves by in years gone by should have been a lost art form. But horror filmmaker and producer Larry Fessenden has, for the past five years, been turning out regular seasons and live performances, radio plays for the digital age as the main site states it. And since Fessenden’s work and passion is slanted to towards the horror genre the shows take on that dark and twisted nature.

So, armed with guest stars, top horror writers, musicians and some dandy foley artists Fessenden has set out to bring back that tradition and inject it with his own dark energy. The foley artists had all manner of tools up there with them. The small door was cute. They used half a watermelon and a butcher’s knife for the stabbing effects (hence the title). TwitchFilm’s own Izzy Lee was performing that night and she said that if you are close enough to the stage you can smell the watermelon when someone gets stabbed in the story. How’s that for having that on your subconscious on every Summer picnic from here on out? There was just all manner of tools, practical and digital, for providing a soundscape for every tale. Fessenden, doing his best Crypt Keeper homage, introduced each radio play.

The first radio play was Hidden Records by Douglas Buck. A young man living with his fundamentally religious mother may wonder what his father was really like. One day he meets a jazz pianist (played by The Candyman Tony Todd!) who has been holding on to the only recording his dad ever made. But the recording held a dark secret message and family secrets are exposed. The confrontations will turn deadly and murderous in the end. Of all three radio plays Hidden Records played it the most serious. Bolstered by terrific live music and the groovy growl of Tony Todd’s voice you could say it was the most soulful as well. Then the guitar would wail and scream just like the victims in the climax. The first radio play helped set the mood for the night.

The second radio play was Speaking in Tongues by Glenn McQuaid, who is also the show’s other curator with Fessenden. To appease the partisan masses this second tale was set in Montreal and for us anglophones we had to be patient as half the dialogue was in Quebec French. Just like Fessenden’s character Mr Glas, we had to wait for the translation, which was no trouble at all. In the story Mr. Glas came to Montreal to find four people and collect their memories. Think of it like a supernatural Collateral. He was going to combine the words in their memories to make a phrase that would kill him. Because he is immortal and he wants to end his life now. Fessenden was delightful as Mr. Glas. Our own Izzy Lee lent her vocal skills as one of his victims. The mix of comedy and horror really picked up in this second play. The real highlight was Fessenden up on stage. I was trying to follow the advice of our filmmaking friend from earlier but it is just as fun to watch the performers as much as it is to listen to them.

The final play of the night was Barricade by Larry Fessenden. The Battery’s Jeremy Gardner was a newlywed husband who takes his new wife to a secluded house. They are about to consummate their marriage, including the making out with one’s own hand, when a earthquake shakes up the area. Subterranean creatures come out and attack anything on the surface. Tony Todd returned to the lineup as a worker from a nearby research facility. Admittedly details got kind of lost as events escalated and Fessenden started hammering boards in background as the characters boarded up their honeymoon destination, but I believe that they were responsible for making the creatures and now everyone was going to die. By the third act the balance between horror and humor skewed favorably towards humor. And funny is good. Barricade was the remote location of Night of the Living Dead combined with small creature horror flicks like Ghoulies.

All in all, it was a terrific night out. The perfect way to cap off my week in Montreal. And it was a nice change of pace, something different but complementary to the festival going experience. And before God could find us we ran back into the night, to the Irish Embassy Pub to close out the morning. For though our eyes and ears had their full of dark spirits our livers could afford one or two more pints of dark Irish stouts.

Check out Twitch for the full post.

Foley Artists Chris Skotchdopole and Tessa Price

Fessenden, Tony Todd and Sam Zimmerman

A full house

Jeremy Gardner and Kelly McQuade sport Fessenden t-shirts while GEP collaborator Graham Reznick lurks in the background…

Fantasia 2015!

15 year-old writer/director/cast member Jack Fessenden wrapped his first feature film on Sunday July 19. Glass Eye Pix is proud to announce the spectacular cast that joined the production for its 17-day shoot. James Le Gros (DRUGSTORE COWBOY, SAFE, LIVING IN OBLIVION, THE LAST WINTER, MILDRED PIERCE) appears with Glass Eye regular John Speredakos (WENDIGO, I SELL THE DEAD) along with producer/cinematographer Larry Fessenden (HABIT, JUG FACE, I SELL THE DEAD). Also in the cast, Robert Burke Warren (COLD IN JULY), Asa Spurlock (ALL FOR ONE) and Kevin Corrigan (THE DEPARTED, GOODFELLAS), as well as local thespians from the Upstate location.

In upstate New York, two teenage boys are tasked with cleaning out their father’s old mobile home on an abandoned property, but the boys are in for a surprise when they discover three crooks on the run have taken refuge in the trailer.

Exclusive pictures below!

James Le Gros as Cody

Roger Peltzman as Kauffman

John Speredakos as Dutch

Robert Burke Warren as J.T.

Jack Fessenden as Conner 

Asa Spurlock as Ash

Glenn McQuaid and Larry Fessenden’s audio drama series Tales From Beyond the Pale will be presenting a live performance of three brand new original Tales at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal this coming Monday, July 27.

Performers include Tony Todd (CANDYMAN), Jeremy Gardner (THE BATTERY), Noah Segan (DEADGIRL, STARRY EYES) and Tales regulars Roxanne Bejamin, Sam Zimmerman and Fessenden, among many others. Tales are penned by Douglas Buck (CUTTING MOMENTS, SISTERS, THE ACCIDENT), McQuaid and April Snellings (“Cold Reading”) and Fessenden. Poster by live Tale regular Trevor Denham.

Genre legend Eric Red (Near Dark, The Hitcher, Body Parts) records remotely from LA with his East Coast cast which includes Ella June Conroy (Run All Night), Jill Zarin (Real Housewives of New York), and Jack Ketchum (author, “The Girl Next Door”). Fessenden (pictured), McQuaid and Jenn Wexler produce.

Fangoria just released an awesome write-up/revisit on HABIT, written, directed, and starring Fessenden. As writer Ken W. Hanley states, HABIT is “an astoundingly well-made tale of sex, blood and psychological distress that functions as not only a great horror film, but a great film period.”

From the article:

For those unfamiliar with this macabre indie masterpiece, HABIT follows a young, alcoholic man grieving the loss of his father and a recent break-up, who meets an enigmatic young woman at a Halloween party. Soon, he finds himself inexplicably obsessed with the woman, with whom he embarks in a sexually-driven relationship that involves violent nightly trysts and orgasmic bloodletting. However, the man soons finds himself experiencing an inexplicable illness, and as his symptoms become worse, he begins to suspect that his partner may be something more vicious than a vixen.

But to Fessenden’s credit, HABIT doesn’t look like a horror movie; in fact, the style of the film is incredible indicative of the work of his indie contemporaries Abel Ferrara, Jim Jarmusch and Richard Linklater in that there’s a very purposeful, intimate composition of every shot, yet the camera is allowed to breathe and move around. The film’s descent from urban fantasy to hallucinatory fever dream terror is gradual and contemplative but also hypnotic in a sense, and the audience gets almost a claustrophobic sense from the predicament from our hero. And once the film goes firmly into genre territory, it’s completely in line with the narrative, with drives just enough doubt into the situation to ride the line of psychological horror and full-on vampire flick.

Shout! Factory just released the artwork for the special Larry Fessenden Collection Blu-Ray release!

From Shout! Factory’s Facebook Page:

Four tales of terror from the multi-talented filmmaker Larry Fessenden will be making their Blu-ray debuts on October 20th within THE LARRY FESSENDEN COLLECTION. As reported back in June, the films are NO TELLING (1991), HABIT (1995), WENDIGO (2001) and THE LAST WINTER (2006).

Extras on the 4-disc set will be announced at a later date but we can officially share the final artwork (provided from the Director himself) and also an exclusive offer if you order from us directly: The set will ship two weeks earlier than national street date PLUS the first 300 who order will received a signed slipcase from Mr. Fessenden himself!

Pre-Order the collection now!