Weng's Chop says PollyGrind Film Festival displays “imagination unbound”

LAS VEGAS - March 30, 2014 - PRLog -- In the most recent issue of Weng’s Chop, the quarterly international magazine dedicated to all cinema outside the mainstream, co-editor Tony Strauss calls the PollyGrind Film Festival “one of the legitimate champions of truly independent filmmaking.”

The March 2014 release (Volume 2, Issue 1, Number 5) is the publication’s biggest to date, clocking in at 266 pages and nearly two pounds of cinema fun. Forty-two of those pages are dedicated to PollyGrind, the annual festival of Las Vegas that is now in its fifth year.

“I’m simply blown away by the love they’ve shown PollyGrind,” festival director Chad Clinton Freeman said. “What’s really nice is they have fully embraced all aspects of the event, from grindhouse and arthouse, to cult, underground and horror, to socially conscious films, documentaries and overall bad ass indie filmmaking. PollyGrind is all over the place and Weng’s Chop is as well.”

Coverage of PollyGrind in the issue includes a Q&A with Freeman, 41 photos from the event, 40 photos of the feature films with reviews of every single feature that played, and listings of all of the shorts that screened and all 100-plus awards.

Of the films, Strauss writes they are a display of “imagination unbound.”

“These are not films made by committee or by test-screening-dictated tweaking,” Strauss writes. “These are the honest visions of the artists who created them.”

Features reviewed here are 13/13/13, To Jennifer, House of Forbidden Secrets, The Cemetery, Cross Bearer, Slaughterhouse Bride, Benny Love Killing, A Measure of the Sin, Nightmare Box, Desolate, I Am Death, Little *ucker, The Cohasset Snuff Film, Darkest Days, Dry Bones, American Girls, Sweet Leaf, Diet of Sex, Leave It on the Track, What I Love About Concrete, Boys Cry, Blood Soaked, The Minstrel Killer (now known as Blackface Killer), Truth or Dare, The Synthetic Man, The Yellow Bellies, The Commune, Billy Club, Barbazul, Sacrifice: In the Name of Goddess Gadhimai, China White Serpentine, Jonas, Tricks, Beast: A Monster Among Men, Savage Witches, Eye of the Bennu, Locomotive, Purgatorium, Legend of the Hillbilly Butcher, Coyote, and Cheeseballs.

“This is like a yearbook  almost for PollyGrind 2013,” Freeman said. “The cool thing is this magazine, which is more like a book, has so much more to offer as well with coverage of some other events, as well as in depth looks at the women of jungle movies, Ricky Lau’s Mr. Vampire series, Faces of Death, much more and tons of reviews. It’s like a book of movie mayhem.”

An international film festival steeped in artistic freedom, PollyGrind celebrates individuality, diversity, creativity, and empowerment by showcasing the work of filmmakers with defiantly independent visions.

Named one of 2012's “25 Festivals Worth the Entry Fee” by MovieMaker Magazine and voted by readers to the magazine’s 2013 Top 5 Coolest Experiemntal/Underground Film Festivals, PollyGrind has seen more than 80 of its official selections earn distribution deals from Lions Gate, Alternative Cinema, Showtime, IFC Midnight, Wild Eye Releasing, Hannover House, Phase 4 Films, Brink, Unearthed Films, Whacked Movies, Troma and more.

The festival, which recently placed second in Las Vegas Review-Journal's Best of Las Vegas online voting for Best Reoccurring Event and has been praised by the likes of Albert Pyun, Herschel Gordon Lewis, Eric Stanze, Greg Lamberson and Lloyd Kaufman, is currently accepting submissions from filmmakers all around the world for its next event. Feature films, documentaries, shorts, medium films, trailers, music videos, promos and screenplays of all genres are welcome.

PollyGrind’s fifth annual event is slated to run October 16-18.

The regular deadline for submissions is April 30, with a late deadline of May 13, a Last Minute Deadline of June 30, and a Withoutabox Extended Deadline of July 31. Filmmakers will be notified of their acceptance status by September 1.

For more information, visit http://www.PollyGrind.com orhttp://www.Facebook.com/PollyGrind.

Weng’s Chop can be purchased at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/wengs-chop and Amazon.com.