The 20th Annual Communicator Awards results are in, and TALES has won Awards of Excellence for The Crush (Writing/Script category) and Caper (Program category), as well as an Award of Distinction for The Crush (Program category). Thank you all for the support!! Hooray!!!

Fessenden prattles on in recent articles for Horror Hound and the U.K.’s Digital Filmmaker

Get a look at the TV spot for CHILLING VISIONS: 5 STATES OF FEAR, featuring GEP segments, Glenn McQuaid’s THE TROUBLE WITH DAD (Separation) and Graham Reznick’s THE CAREGIVER (Loss of Autonomy).

5 STATES OF FEAR premieres on Chiller Friday July 11, 9pm.

A release date’s been announced for WORST FRIENDS, featuring Fessenden alongside Kristen Connolly (THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, HOUSE OF CARDS) and Cody Horn (MAGIC MIKE, END OF WATCH); The comedy arrives on all platforms September 16.

Synopsis:
When self-involved prankster Jake (Richard Tanne) gets hit by a car, the only person around to take care of him is his childhood friend Sam (Noah Barrow). With the help of pretty, no-nonsense physical therapist Lily (Cody Horn), Sam agrees to help Jake recover, but when Sam’s high school crush Zoe (Kristen Connolly) moves back to town, it’s every man for himself and Sam is left asking, “with friends like these, who needs enemies?!”

Check out the trailer below and learn more at the movie’s official Facebook page.

Ti West’s THE SACRAMENT, produced by GEP pals Jacob Jaffke and Peter Phok, starring AJ Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Amy Seimetz, Kentucker Audley, and Gene Jones, opens TODAY in New York at Cinema Village and in Toronto at Carlton Cinema, with more cities starting next week. Check out the official site for all the screenings. Also On Demand and on iTunes.

And get a look at the film in this red-band clip from IGN!:

Larry meets Louie on tonight’s brand new episode of LOUIE. Check out Fessenden in the clip below and catch the full episode tonight at 10p.

AMERICAN JESUS continues its theatrical tour in Chicago, opening today at Facets Cinematheque. Garriga chatted with NPR’s Worldview this afternoon in anticipation of the Chicago premiere. Listen below. The interview starts at the 20 minute mark.

AMERICAN JESUS contributor Frank Schaeffer has a new book out, and it’s available for free today and tomorrow on Kindle/Amazon.

Further theatrical screenings include Webster U Film Series, St. Louis (June 13-15), Trylon Microcinema in Minneapolis (June 16-17) and Park Circle Film Society, Charleston, SC (June 28th). More screening info at AmericanJesusTheMovie.com. For those watching digitally the film is available across all cable video on demand providers; check your local cable video on demand listings. Also available on iTunes, Amazon, Xbox and many others.

David Denby of THE NEW YORKER opines “What happens at the dam, filmed at night, with only shimmering light, is the most nerve-racking sequence in recent movies.”

THE VILLAGE VOICE writes: “The most radical thing about this eco-terrorism drama is its quiet patience and formal vigor.”

Glass Eye pal Kelly Reichardt releases her film NIGHT MOVES this week. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard and was executive produced by Fessenden and a host of others. See this vital new independent film in theaters Friday May 30.

I’d heard about Blood Glacier from a film festival catalogue and seen it compared to Carpenter’s The Thing and tangentially to my own film The Last Winter. Most intriguingly, it was a horror film — a creature film — about global warming, a real horror we all collectively face.

read the article at Talkhouse Film

From MovieMaker Magazine:

“Larry Fessenden, producer of the new documentary American Jesus, explains why Glass Eye Pix became involved in Aram Garriga’s exploration of the sometimes bizarre relationship between faith, materialism, politics and personal passions that is American Christianity.

I run a small production outfit in New York City called Glass Eye Pix. We are known for making independent horror-themed films with a psychological bent. Through the company I have produced such films as The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers, Stake Land and I Sell the Dead. My own films include Habit, Wendigo and The Last Winter. Why would a company known for making independent horror films get involved with a documentary called American Jesus?

The answer is that I am primarily concerned with the construction of meaning in our daily lives, in the human tendency to see the world through narrative. My horror films have been about how we invent monsters and demons to deal with reality. In some way the subtext of my films is that the monsters we invent are a comfort and help us frame and define our existence.

In Habit, the protagonist believes his girlfriend is a vampire causing him to weaken physically, when we the viewer can plainly see he is a drunk debilitating himself. In Wendigo a 10-year-old invents a mythical being to protect himself from the horror that his father has been shot by a disgruntled hunter in the woods. I have always felt that my films are fundamentally about our craving for religious and mythic narratives in a senseless and arbitrary world.

And so it was not a stretch when the filmmaker Aram Garriga came to me with his proposal to make a film that was then titled Pop Church. I had met Garriga at the Sitges Film Festival outside Barcelona, one of the great horror and fantasy festivals in the world. Garriga worked for the fest and played host to myself and my producing associate Brent Kunkle on more than one visit to Sitges…”

Check out the full article at MovieMaker.com.

AMERICAN JESUS is now playing in Los Angeles at the Downtown Independent and coming soon to Chicago. Also available on Demand and on DVD.

An exclusive clip is now available at Indiewire. See it here.