A bounty of homegrown horror movies are screening in Louisville this weekend at the 502 Lumens film festival.
Founder Aria Baci first came up with the idea while working as a culture writer at LEO Weekly where she often wrote about local filmmakers.
“I started to recognize that there are a lot of people working in film in Louisville, but not everyone is connected with each other,” Baci said.
During this time, Baci was in the liberal studies program at the University of Louisville and meeting other students who were young directors and writers.
“All these things kind of coalesced, and I thought we need to bring all these films together somehow at a film festival, and they're all somehow Gothic or horror so that really needs to be the theme,” Baci said.
During her time at U of L, Baci met filmmakers Alyssa Couri and Hunter Hoskins.
Their film “The Legend of Gourdface” will be one of four films screened at 502 Lumens on Sunday.
It features a killer scarecrow that lives at a local farm.
Couri wrote the film while she and Hoskins were students. During their senior year, they decided to bring “The Legend of Gourdface” to life for the capstone project.
Hoskins came in to edit the script, and he and Couri co-directed the film which he said acts as a love letter from two people who grew up being “obsessed with Halloween.”
“In popular horror, there's a lot of nostalgia for the 80s and the 70s, but there's not a lot of like, early 2000 stuff going on right now, and like, early 90s,” Hoskins said. “And I think that's something cool about ‘Gordface,’ that it tackles that vibe of ‘Hocus Pocus,’ or ‘Goosebumps.’”
Part of Couri’s motivation with “Gourdface” was to create a horror story that younger audiences could enjoy.
“I remember when I was writing it that I wanted to write something more fun and campy, because a lot of the horror that we've been seeing lately has been very serious and elevated,” Couri said. “[I wanted] it be something that, like, you can throw on around Halloween with kids in the room and not be scared that, like something really scary or traumatizing is gonna happen.”
Couri said she wants the movie to show younger filmmakers just how much they are capable of.
“I hope that it inspires other people to go out and make the thing that they want to make, because it's a hard process when you know you're in college or you're younger, to go find people that are willing to give you their time, and what work that they will do,” Couri said. “And I think ‘Gourdface,’ has a charm to it, that it is very low budget. “
“The Legend of Gourdface” is one of three short films that will play at 502 Lumens. The festival's singular feature-length “Mind Body Spirit” doesn’t take the campy approach to horror.
The film’s co-writer and director Alex Henes took inspiration from his own journey with yoga which he started during the COVID-19 lockdown.
“A lot of the movie delves into the aspects of wellness and sort of the way that we present ourselves online,” Henes said. “And there's a lot about cultural appropriation and where, you know, I feel like I fit as a white person in a world where I don't necessarily need to be heard from anymore.”
Two other short films, “Anansi” and “Wilderness,” will also be screened.
All of the filmmakers featured are either from Louisville or live here now, which sharpens Baci’s goal of bringing together the local film community.
“My hope for 502 Lumens is that… crew and critics and audiences who might not know each other, might not know what each other are doing around town and to build some community around filmmaking,” Baci said.
Participants want 502 Lumens to be a place where Louisville creators can show what can be done by people from here.
“I really want Louisville to not just become a place for L.A. or New York people to come make their movies, but a place for Louisville people to make their movies and have local crew and be able to make our own projects,” Couri said. “I hope that 502 Lumens shows potential producers or investors, or even just people in the community that care about film, that Louisville filmmakers are just as powerful and just as cool as L.A. filmmakers.”
502 Lumens is Oct. 20 from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. at PORTAL.
