Blog: Film festivals

Considered among the top 100 most popular film festivals in the world, the Annual Great Lakes International Film Festival has officially opened its Call for Entries for the 2014 Festival, which will be showcasing the best works of emerging and veteran filmmakers.

For our 2014 season, we are accepting submissions internationally of feature length and short length films in the genres of Documentary, Experimental, Religious/Spiritual, Animation, Comedy, Horror, with Horror sub-genres that include Supernatural, Thrillers, Wicken, Magical, Slashers, Science Fiction, Suspense, Horror Documentary, Horror Animation and all genres of Music Videos and GLBT films for the 2014 festival.

If there is anything as universal as the ageless storytelling of motion pictures, it’s the music that makes up life’s soundtrack.

The 2014 Great Lakes International Film Festival shall accept Music Videos from around the world of cross-continent and cross-genre productions. We shall accept Music Videos of all genres from Pop, Punk, Rock, Alt-Country, Country-Western, Folk, Reggae, Hip-Hop to Electronica, Jazz, Blues, Zydeco, Industrial, Metal, Hardcore, Gothic, Karaoke, Avant-Garde, World Music, and Experimental.

The 2014 Great Lakes International Film Festival will accept all forms of Religious, Christian, and Spiritual films including African, African-American, GLBT, Black, Hispanic, Islamic, Latino, Native/Aboriginal and student films from the United States and around the world.

Showcasing the best films of the 2014 season, the Great Lakes International Film Festival will be held LIVE in the great city of Erie Pennsylvania in September 2014, with our online festival taking place September 18th thru September 30th, 2014.

Since our inception, the Great Lakes International Film Festival has always been on the cutting-edge of independent film presentation.

As the first to introduce film screenings that completely utilized the DLP® technology developed by Texas Instruments, our festival has always brought tomorrow’s technology to the independent film world today.

In keeping with that same dedication to technology, our festival now introduces the new face of online film screenings. It was with much time and expense that we developed our state-of-the-art and revolutionary online screening platform, keeping both the Filmmaker’s peace of mind and the complete security of the Filmmaker’s work always as our first and highest priority.

Much like a brick and mortar screening, our virtual theater allows the filmmaker’s work to be showcased to the world with the highest levels of security and presentation quality. Unlike any online screening system in the world, ours never allows films to be copied, downloaded, or reproduced in any way, nor can the html code of any film be copied and pasted into any other site successfully. No film launched in our virtual theater can play or even appear on any other website.

The Great Lakes International Film Festival’s virtual theater platform offers filmmakers not only the exposure to the world that they deserve, but does so keeping the integrity of the film and the filmmaker’s trust always fully intact.

Over the years, we have had many films that have screened on the Sundance Channel, IFC, PBS and HBO along with countless filmmakers who have received distribution deals after screening in our festival.

For the filmmaker that is looking for a bit more, the Great Lakes International Film Festival is also a great place to get your film noticed. In October of 2004 we were proud to present the North East United States Premiere of “SAW”, Lions Gate Films’ gripping psychological thriller starring Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, Monica Potter and Leigh Whannel, and with “The Collector of Bedford Street” having been nominated for an Academy Award after being screened at our 2002 fest, we certainly bring the best and the brightest to the shores of Erie, Pa.

We have also been host to such filmmakers and special guests as actor/director/producer Dirk Benedict (Battlestar Galacticaand A-Team); writer Erick Rodgers (Writer of NYPD Blue); director/producer Harri James (script supervisor “Alias”, Tremors II: Aftershocks, Tremors 4: The Legend Begins); producer Otto Felix (“B.J. and the Bear” & Up in Smoke); award-winning, best-selling mystery author Jamian Snow (Shrouded Insanity); actor/writer/producer Bill Hinzman (Flesheater & Night of the Living Dead); director Lloyd Kaufman (Toxic Avenger films, Pot Zombies, & President of Troma Films); actor Gunnar Hansen (Texas Chainsaw Massacre); actor/ director Mark Borchardt (American Movie & Coven); director John Hancock (“Hill Street Blues”, “The Twilight Zone”, & California Dreaming); actress Debbie Rochon “Scream Queen” (Blood Relic, Vampyre Tales, & Lord of the Undead); producer/director Bobby Logan (Meatballs 4 & Repossessed); Joel Miller; WWE and ECW wrestling superstar The Blue Meanie, and in 2002 we had the unique opportunity to present Keith Carradine with a special award for artistic excellence, award-winning director Joone, award-winning actress Jesse Jane, and local actress Marie Madison.

The legendary Terry Moore who was our special guest of honor in 2006 was presented with a lifetime Achievement Award for her amazing accomplishments in film over the past 60 years.

From the feature narrative genre to documentary to animation; experimental, horror and Spiritual films, the Great Lakes International Film Festival celebrates the film arts in dynamic transition. As emerging technologies continue to redefine the form, filmmakers from the Great Lakes region, across the country and around the world express the common and the diverse through the age-old tradition. — The art of the story.