A shift is happening at Hastings Rocks International Film Festival: a shift into the scary, the anxiety-ridden and the dystopian. Their call for entries is now open, for original films to be selected for next year’s screenings at the Electric Palace and the Printworks. Attention, filmmakers!

This is a re-launch for The Hastings festival, an off-shoot of the successful Brighton Rocks International Film Festival. It has always had a focus on indie cinema, its last four occasions providing a space for little-heard voices. Now, it aims to emphasise a more specific, niche voice.

Although this won’t explicitly be a horror festival, explains director and film academic Dr James Rowlins, “it’s genre cinema, it’s dystopia, it’s the darker-side-of-the-moon type of stuff” that the organisers are interested in. “But,” he adds, “we do hope to have a lot of horror films.”

The organisers hope to capitalise on the presently vibrant UK horror-filmmaking scene. According to Rowlins, this is also the most commercially successful. But that doesn’t mean they’re selling out to the masses. The emphasis will remain on shoestring-budget filmmaking. Festival co-director, Stephanie De Palma, emphasises this. “We’re not Hollywood. We don’t want to be Hollywood! We want to get the independents, to get the emerging filmmakers.”

HASTINGS GOTHIC

Not only did the vibrancy of the horror community appeal to the festival organisers, but the Hastings location (Victorian Gothic, primal celebrations, and echoes of Aleister Crowley) was also a vital part of their decision. Curator Sam Rose says: “Hastings is a town of artists and outsiders, and they deserve a film festival that showcases and celebrates this.”

Stephanie De Palma concurs. “There’s this bubbling underneath Hastings. There are these voices, these real hardcore creative people, creative minds.” She hopes the Festival will “bring them out of the woodwork.”

The psychological potential of the horror genre is also a key factor in the festival’s shift to the dark side. James says that “genre can be used as sugar in the medicine. To say something interesting, complicated and difficult.” Most people want to escape their demons. De Palma however sees a certain joy in confronting them, opening up further conversations. De Palma sees this type of film as addressing deep-seated anxieties and fears, but in the most creative and imaginative way.

“We don’t want anyone to hold back. We want to see what makes you uneasy. Because what makes you uneasy also takes you out of something you want to be taken out of; it’s a fantasy life that’s saying, ‘we can talk about the uneasy.’”

POPULAR GENRE

The aim is to put Hastings’ filmmakers and Hastings Rocks International Film Festival on the map. Despite the appeal to the darker and more obscure side, the Festival organisers hope that the popularity of genre cinema will also appeal to the masses. “This is a call to get those people that we need,” says James, “If we want a great festival in Hastings, we need people, and we need supporters and a network. And this is the moment where we really give it our best shot to get that. And with that in place, then the festival will thrive into the future.”

Between now and 2026, when the qualifying new films will be shown, classics of the genre will be screened at the Electric Palace in High St. It’s a creepy series: Nosferatu, then for Christmas the original slasher Black Christmas. 2026 begins with cult classic B-picture, The Wicker Man, the more recent body-horror killer Titane, then Suspiria (vile witchy goings-on at a ballet school, and it all ends in flames), Zulawski’s Possession (nasty tentacled creature has sex with deranged heroine; everybody dies), CandyMan (American Gothic and eternal vengeance), and finally The Exorcist.

Further Festival details, entry form and deadlines can be found at filmfreeway.com/HastingsRocks

The 4th Annual Hastings Rocks International Film Festival will run from 11-12 April at the Printworks this year, and will showcase 60 films made in this region.

This year’s festival puts documentaries firmly in the spotlight with a series of films charting aspects of life in Hastings. King Putt is an entertaining account of the 2024 World Crazy Golf Championships held in Hastings, in which reigning champion Marc Chapman’s no-holds barred approach to the sport is no laughing matter. A documentary by Adam Clements digs deep into the legend of Hastings’ America Ground– a story that, whether it be truth or myth, cuts to the core of the town’s idiosyncratic nature. It is followed by a fly-on-the-wall portrait of local thespian Patrick Kealey and the travails of keeping the Arts alive during a pandemic.

Hastings also provides the backdrop to much of the festival’s fiction. Shouting at the Sea sets scenes in Bottle Alley, the funicular railway, the pier, West Hill, and the FILO pub. It tells the ultimate ‘should-I-leave-or-should-I-stay’ story. Director Benjamin Verrall describes the film as a “love letter to the town” and, after its premiere at a Hollywood film festival, he is delighted to be screening it in his birthplace.

The Saturday feature film, The Devil Makes Work for Idle Hands, directed by Folkestone-based Colin O’Reilly, is a hard-hitting drama that highlights social ills facing today’s underprivileged. The Saturday programme segues from realist dramas – the majority directed and performed by women this year – to experimental and esoteric film. Late evening audiences can expect zany comedy and dark horror.

Attendees will have the chance to engage with the festival’s special guest, acclaimed local director Andrew Kötting, who will discuss the challenges facing independent filmmakers and the evolution of his own work towards new media.

Dates: 11-12 April Programme: rocksfestivals.com/screening Tickets: filmfreeway.com/HastingsRocks/tickets Venue: The Printworks: 14 Claremont, Hastings, TN34 1HA