Fantastic Fest 2011 Announces the Fantastic Fest Awards

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Fantastic Fest is excited to announce this year's Fantastic Fest Award winners.  Fantastic Fest 2011 brought us a time travelling samurai, a supernatural hallway in the woods, a deadly family reunion, and rampaging Cuban zombies. Picking favorites from this year's line up was a formidable task to say the least, but our esteemed team of jurors have done the nearly impossible and chosen the best and most visionary films of the festival.

The juries were comprised of some of the most esteemed filmmakers, critics, festival directors and show biz people in the industry.  Their thoughtful deliberations provided the following acknowledgments of cinematic excellence in all things Fantastic:

The audience awards are presented by accounting firm Maxwell Locke & Ritter (www.mlrpc.com), who provided the certified tabulation of ballots this year and are the exclusive accounting sponsor of Fantastic Fest.  AMD and Dell are the presenters of prestigious "Next Wave" Awards, which honor emerging filmmakers.  The winner of the "Next Wave" feature award is presented with $1,000 and a Dell (www.alienware.com) multimedia laptop provided by AMD (www.amd.com). The Fantastic Fest Awards ceremony is also presented by the Texas Motion Picture Alliance (www.txmpa.org), who advocate for film, video, commercial, interactive, and digital media production inside the state of Texas.

For the latest developments visit the Fantastic Fest Facebook & Twitter.

For more details regarding Fantastic Fest, contact festival publicist Brandy Fons, at [email protected].  For more information, visit www.fantasticfest.com.

About Fantastic Fest

Fantastic Fest is the largest genre film festival in the U.S., specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world. In years past the festival has been home to world premieres of THERE WILL BE BLOOD, APOCALYPTO, ZOMBIELAND and RED while the guest roster has included such talent as Mel Gibson, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Ryan Reynolds, Karl Urban, Josh Hartnett, The RZA, Dolph Lundgren, Jemaine Clement, Paul Rudd, Bill Pullman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Kevin Smith, Jon Favreau, George Romero, Darren Aronofsky and Mike Judge. Fantastic Fest also features world, national and regional premieres of new, up-and-coming genre films.  The festival has launched and propelled the buzz for international genre hits like THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, MONSTERS, TIMECRIMES and TROLLHUNTER.  Fantastic Fest is held each year at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on South Lamar in Austin, Texas. The Alamo Drafthouse was named the best cinema in America by Entertainment Weekly and features food and drink served to your seat without any disruption of the movie experience.

During his Keynote Address at the International film Festival Summit in Las Vegas, Variety president and publisher Charlie Koones listed Fantastic Fest in a list of "10 Film Festivals We Love," a list which included industry heavy-hitters such as Cannes, Toronto and Telluride.  We've also been named as one of the "25 coolest film festivals" and the "25 film festivals worth the entry fee" by Moviemaker Magazine.

Our Partners

Returning Presenting Sponsors for Fantastic Fest and Arcade include Austin-based Ambhar Tequila, as well as AMD, Alienware, and FEARnet. FEARnet is the premier cable television channel for fans of horror, thriller and suspense entertainment. Featuring original series and movies, its unrivaled modern horror library unites Sony Pictures Television, Lionsgate, the two top studios producing and distributing the genre, and Comcast, the nation's leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services. FEARnet is also available online at FEARnet.com and On Demand.

New Presenting Sponsors include Texas' own Shiner Beer, whose family of products will be featured throughout the festival. Joining them are Plano-based Well Go USA Entertainment, PlayStation Network, and Fandango. Fandango is the exclusive video sponsor as well as ticketing partner of Fantastic Fest 2011. Daily tickets can be purchased at www.fantasticfest.com or www.fandango.com. A full list of this year's sponsors can be found at www.fantasticfest.com/sponsors.

About Alamo Drafthouse

The Alamo Drafthouse is a lifestyle entertainment brand with an acclaimed cinema-eatery, the largest genre film festival in the United Sates and an online collectible art store. Named "the best theater in America" by Entertainment Weekly, the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema has built a reputation as a movie lover's oasis not only by combining food and drink service with the movie-going experience, but also introducing unique programming and high-profile, star studded special events. Alamo Drafthouse Founder & CEO, Tim League, created Fantastic Fest, a world renowned film festival dubbed "The Geek Telluride" by Variety. Fantastic Fest showcases eight days of offbeat cinema from independents, international filmmakers and major Hollywood studios. The Alamo Drafthouse's collectible art boutique, Mondo, offers breathtaking, original products featuring designs from world-famous artists based on licenses for popular TV and Movie properties including Star Wars, Star Trek & Universal Monsters. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is expanding its brand in new and exciting ways, including the launch of Drafthouse Films, a new film distribution label and plans to extend its theaters and unique programming philosophy to additional markets across the United States. More information about Alamo Drafthouse franchise opportunities are available on the official website.

SOURCE Fantastic Fest