Cinefantastique Online

Variety’s Festival Central has a nice run-down on Sitges, the venerable festival devoted to fantasy and horror films. Entitled “Sitges – Blood, Gore and Palm Trees,” the article is mostly a history of the fest, with a glimpses of this year’s edition:

Blood and gore amongst the palm trees. That might sound like a B-movie pitch but it’s actually the essence of Europe’s largest fantasy film festival – the Sitges Catalonia Intl. Film Festival, which celebrates its 40th edition this year.

In its attractive Mediterranean setting, revolving around the Hotel Melia, Sitges is like a relaxed version of Cannes – with a vibrant mix of screenings, press conferences and exuberant parties, attracting celebrity guests such as Sam Raimi, Quentin Tarantino, Terry Gilliam, Guillermo del Toro and David Cronenberg.

The quaint, sun-drenched fishing town of Sitges – a 25-minute ride from Barcelona – is perhaps an unlikely breeding ground for chainsaw fanatics, but in the 1960s the town was a hotbed of counter-culture against Franco’s Spain. The fantasy genre, which prides itself on violating taboos and caricaturing sources of social malaise, was the ideal vehicle for subverting the fascist regime’s moral straitjacket.

In the turbulent year of 1968, the Sitges fest was born as the International Fantasy & Horror Film Week and launched its Official Competition section in 1971. John Carpenter recently made a tribute to this nascent period, setting part of Cigarette Burns (2005) at the 1971 fest.

This year’s festival will include screenings of 1408, a retrosepctive of North American horror movies from the ’70s and ’80s, and the presentation of a lifetime achievement award to George Romero.