Whether it’s our current cultural mood or the increasing frequency of natural disasters, filmmakers lately have been increasingly intent on scaring their audiences silly. There were certainly more than enough outstanding chills and thrills among this year’s submissions to allow us to put together this dark and creepy program, which ranges from the world premiere of Polish director Marcin Pazera’s Moloch, a peculiar symbiosis of factory and man, to American filmmaker Carter Smith’s Sundance Jury Prize-winning Bugcrush, a disturbing look at the perils of trying to fit in at a suburban high school. The Netherlands’ Rosto whips up a spinning nightmare in Jona/Tomberry, while Venezuelan-born, UK-based Carl Zitelmann uses vividly stark animation to take viewers inside a cowboy’s last moments. in Temerario. Taken as a whole, Fear and Trembling’s troubling and occasionally terrifying tricks and treats will get into your subconscious and plant seeds there.

ARTIFICIAL WORLDS V.3
UK | 8:00 | 2005
WRITER/DIRECTOR: RICHARD FENWICK
PRODUCER: JO PHIPPS
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: JEFF CLEVERLEY
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: LOL CRAWLEY
CAST: ESTHER SHARMAN, SARAH HARDY, STEPHEN BROWN, BEN JOHNSTONE, HARVEY TANG, SEBASTIAN HATTON, MICHAEL JAMES LAMONT, DOUGLAS MCQUILLIN
OFFLINE EDITOR: PAUL HARDCASTLE @ TRIM EDITING
FILM COLORIST: MARK GETHIN @ MPC
COMPOSER: CATHODE
HEAD OF POST-PRODUCTION: MARCUS O’KEEFE
MODELLING/ANIMATION TEAM: MOSHINE ANIMATION STUDIO AND ROBERT SHOEBOTTOM
FLAME ARTIST: MARK BEARDALL @ TRIANGLE TELEVISION
SPONSORS: TRIANGLE TELEVISION, TRIM EDITING, MPC
FUNDERS: ARTS COUNCIL, DIGITAL CITY, AV FESTIVAL, MIDDLESBROUGH COUNCIL
TOOLS: 16MM, AVID, 3D STUDIO MAX, FLAME
The latest installment in British director Richard Fenwick’s ongoing RND# series and the third of his Artificial Worlds films, Artificial Worlds v.3, like its predecessors, explores an experimental rupture, presenting the end of the world in a short film. Apocalyptic and nihilistic, it portrays the real world in freefall, focusing on eight anonymous characters as they attempt to outrun a fast-moving digital tsunami, which tracks them like an incomprehensible predator from another dimension.

BUGCRUSH
US | 36:00 | 2006
WRITER/DIRECTOR: CARTER SMITH
PRODUCER: ERIN WILE
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: DARREN LEW
CASTING DIRECTOR: JENNIFER VENDITTI
EDITOR: HOLLE SINGER
SOUND DESIGNER: ERIC NAGY
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: STEFAN BECKMAN
WARDROBE DESIGNER: PAUL STURA
MAKEUP AND HAIR: MIKE POTTER/JOANNA STEWART
SFX MAKEUP: JEREMY SELENFRIEND
SOUND MIXER: NOAH TIMAN
RERECORDING MIXER: ANDY KRIS
COLORIST: BILLY GABOR
ASSISTANT DIRECTORS: KERMAINE SUMRA/CARRIE FIX
SCRIPT SUPERVISOR: TONY OSSO
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: LEIGH HOLTZIN
TOOLS: LIGHTWAVE, AUTO CHARACTER SETUP (LIGHTWAVE PLUGIN), PHOTOSHOP, AFTER EFFECTS
Based on a short story by Scott Treleaven, this year’s Sundance Jury Prize winner in short filmmaking tells the story of Ben, a small-town high school loner, whose fascination with Grant, the seductively dangerous new kid, and his sinister friends eventually leads him out to a rural farmhouse where he encounters a world darker than he could possibly have imagined.

JINNIKU NO UMAREKAWARU
ITALY/JAPAN | 5:17 | 2006
DIRECTOR/EDITOR/COMPOSER/VFX: ALESSANDRO PACCIANI
VOICE: KINOSHITA YURIKO
TOOLS: 3DS MAX, BRAZIL, BOUJU, COMBUSTION, AVID XPRESS, PHOTOSHOP
Shot in director Alessandro Pacciani’s Florence, Italy bathroom and in Ginzu Japan, Pacciani's Jinniku is a super-condensed exercise in high-tech J-Horror. Inspired by a nightmare involving a breathing sink and slithering meat, the film challenges expectations and perceptions by violently splicing together the worlds of live flesh and CG effects against a score of explosive white noise.

JONA/TOMBERRY
NETHERLANDS | 12:14 | 2005
WRITER/DIRECTOR: ROSTO
ANIMATOR: STUDIO ROSTO A.D (ROSTO, MARTIJN PAASSCHENS, CHRISTEN BACH, ROLOFF DE JEU)
SOUND DESIGNER: TOM HAMBLETON
PRODUCERS: ROCKETTA FILM, STUDIO ROSTO A.D, ERIK SCHUT, ROSTO, HANNE DIT
TOOLS: HD, MAC G5, AFTER EFFECTS, PHOTOSHOP, CINEMA 4D
In this animated through-the-looking-glass fever dream, an ordinary man finds himself on top of a mountain hovering above a twitching baby with a human torso and a mermaid’s tail. A needle-nosed homunculus who is apparently responsible for this dystopian vision hands the man a gun and insists he shoot the creature. When the man refuses, things just get weirder.

MOLOCH
POLAND | 7:20 | 2006
WRITER/DIRECTOR: MARCIN PAZERA
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: MARCIN KOBYLECKI
COMPOSER/SOUND EFFECTS: DEMODOLL
ADDITIONAL ARTISTS: GRZEGORZ KRZYSIK
Moloch belongs to a long dystopian filmmaking tradition in which machinery is anthropomorphized that stretches back to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, which also featured a terrifying metal god called Moloch. In this grim, gothic nightmare, the setting is the harsh, cold, inhuman environment of an industrial plant, in which a wayward machine called Moloch occasionally wakens from its slumbers to stir the worst human instincts.

TEMERARIO
UK | 9:51 | 2006
DIRECTOR: CARL ZITELMANN
PRODUCER: DEBBIE CROSSCUP
SCREENWRITER: PAUL FRANCIS WILLIAMS
PRODUCER/CHARACTER DESIGNER: KIM FREDERIKSEN
CINEMATOGRAPHER: CARLOS CATALAN
EDITOR: MARIE SØDERPALM
COMPOSER: MATTHEW DAVIDSON
SOUND DESIGNER: CHRISTOPHER WILSON
COMPOSITING AND GRADING: DAN SNAPE
ONLINE AND FINAL GRADE: JAMES OSBORNE
With stylized animation inspired by manga and vintage comics, and storytelling that mixes the feel of old Westerns with fantasy and horror, Temerario – Spanish for “temerity,” or brashness – tells the story of Rio, a cowboy who must confront the evil within himself by fighting a duel with his shadowside.