We live in a late-capitalist hellscape, a stupefied dystopia in which art must be monetized and entertainment is algorithmically generated for maximizing the return on the shareholders' investment. Hollywood and the streaming giants churn out a ceaseless, undifferentiated mass of comfortable billion-dollar tentpoles while this generation's most talented creators die slow deaths of the soul, whiling away their lives in cubicles or call centers or — the highest hope for a filmmaker right now — using their talents to add glisten to cheeseburger commercials or remove the pimples from celebrities' foreheads in promo reels.
In this nightmare world, though, there are still some outsiders out there, street-level weirdos who shed their blood, sweat, and tears to make movies from from deep down inside their ancient lizard brains — no focus testing, no market research, just their pure lizard-brain subconscious vomiting out raw, inaccessible, zero-quadrant anomalies with warts and rough edges and miserable profit potential, and cacophonous throbbing hearts, cinematic abominations that stand in glorious, delirious tribute to the human urge to just f#@king MAKE SOMETHING!
BizarroLand welcomes these beautiful weirdos with open arms.
The Representation Discount
BizarroLand encourages weirdo filmmakers from historically excluded communities — including (but not limited to) women filmmakers, LGBTQ+ filmmakers, BIPOC filmmakers, and disabled filmmakers — to submit their work at a 25% discount. Email stephen@demonskull.org for the code.
The crown jewel of the BizarroLand Film Festival is the Sickie. Originally designed by Brad Bailey and thenceforth sculpted and hand painted by Orlando artists Paul and Debra Berg, the Sickie is the coveted totem of excellence in cinematic weirdness. Thirteen Sickies are given out each year in categories celebrating stand-out achievements in bizarreness, including the Mink Stole Award for the most brain-searingly unforgettable performance and the Weirdest Boner Award for the most unsettlingly sexy scene. Attendees will choose the Audience Favorite Award for both features and shorts, and then finally, there are the most desperately, feverishly desired of all: the Pink Tentacle and the Golden Tentacle, which are only awarded to the short and feature films (respectively) that best exemplify the spirit of BizarroLand.
