Yesterday John and I went to the Star and Shadow for a horror short film festival called Terror on Tyne, now it its third year. I wasn’t sure what to expect, the social media looked pretty professional but you never can tell just from that, plus the tickets said the event opened at 4pm and went until after 10pm, which seemed like a long time for short films.
In the end, it was fantastic. Previous events I’ve attended at the Star and Shadow had been a bit loose with the scheduled times, the place is a fantastic local resource, but due to its structure things vary depending on the organizer of the specific event. In this case the Terror on Tyne guys had a well thought-out schedule, starting with ninetly minutes for folks to arrive, get drinks, socialize, and browse the vendors. Following that there were three films blocks, a Q&A with guest Clive Tonge, and an awards ceremony, with twenty-minute breaks between each. The only thing missing was time to get dinner, although there is pizza takeaway a couple of doors down which we were allowed to bring into the venue, though not the screening room itself.
The Star and Shadow features a lobby with a small cafe area, a venue space with a bar, and the cinema room, so it was ideal for this sort of event really. The venue space was decked out with some slick looking backdrops, and half a dozen vendors plus their merch table. Not loads, but a good variety, and enough to fill the room and give folks something to do with themselves while settling in. I was delighted to see Bloodstone Books was there, and excited to talk to them about their plan to open a physical bookstore nearby. John got some cute Jigsaw fabric badges from Scrappy Badges and wax melts from Rebel Wax (caramel biscuit and spice scented), and I bought the Halloween issue of the Northern Folklore Archive zine from Bloodstone. We got a couple of beers and spent the last twenty minutes before the screening room opened playing a round of Blockbuster and Chill which seemend appropriate – though baffingly neither of us chose horror movies.
The first block of films was in the categories of Horror Comedy and Micro Shorts, the second First Time/Studen and North East, and the third just Horror Short. There were very few that I straight up didn’t like, and several I liked quite a lot in each category. The comedy varied from the very gross but very funny Pimple to the convenience store self-checkout horror Meal Deal, which I’ll be thinking about every time I pick the boiled egg. The micro shorts packed a lot of punch in very brief windows, Drawn won the category award and was also my fave. The First Time/Student ones had the creepiest of the night, the beautifully animated Foreing Bodies. My favourite in the North East category was the stoner horror Gripper, which looked great and was scary fun. Finally, the Horror Short category, which probably had the most scares overall and ranged from the very short and extremely effecive Brush with Death to the very creepy Spanish short, Happy.
We ducked out during the Q&A to pop over to Stepney Road for some quick food, its an embarassment of riches over there nowadays, but were back in time for the last block of films and the awards, even managing to finish out game during the break between those two.
Will definitely be back next year.
