The 31st Annual H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival & CthulhuCon is taking place October 2-4, 2026 on all three screens of the historic Hollywood Theatre (& environs).
Join us at the beautiful Hollywood Theatre for the 2026 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon! This year's literary Guest of Honor is Philip Fracassi, author of the novels A Child Alone with Strangers, Gothic, and Boys in the Valley. He has two feature films based on his work coming out soon: Altar from A24 and Skeletons from Sony Pictures. We're also hosting the Oregon premiere of Hammer Films's Ithaqua with director Casey Walker, and Tyler Savage's Oddities.
Join our low volume announcements list to get notified with news.
Feature Films
Short Films
2026 Lovecraftian MicroFiction Contest deadline is Sept 11th
The annual Lovecraftian Microfiction contest is open!
All stories must be submitted by Friday, September 11, 2026.
>>> Submit your Entry <<<
What is it?
Micro Fiction is very short prose fiction. Smaller than Flash Fiction but bigger than a haiku. Usually 500 words or less. There are some famous short short stories, including Hemingway’s - For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.
Lovecraftian fiction usually takes the form of Cosmic Horror, Weird Fiction, or Speculative or Science Fiction with a Horror twist, as well as horror or ghost stories with an uncanny tone.
According to Lovecraft, “The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”
Why Lovecraftian Micro Fiction?
Lovecraft himself wrote some extremely short fiction. "Memory," "What the Moon Brings," and "Ex Oblivione" are examples. Micro Fiction is a fun way to explore a genre or topic in a challenging way. Can you write a complete story in this limited amount of space? By complete story, we mean a character, situation, beginning, middle, and end. Not a vignette, not a character study, but a story.
Stories must be 500 words or less. **Entries of more than 500 words will be disqualified with no refund and will not be read. Please check your word count before submitting! Most word processing programs have a built in word counter. There are also web sites for this, like wordcounter.net
Our 2026 Not-Kickstarter Cthulhu in Carcosa fundraising campaign is LIVE!
Cthulhu in Carcosa!
Our 2026 Fundraising campaign is now LIVE! Join the campaign to support the 31st Annual H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, by purchasing deluxe and VIP ticket packages, or just T-shirts and other exclusive goodies. This year we've moved off of the Kickstarter platform and built our own system at Arkham Bazaar, to reduce some of the usual bottlenecks, as well as fees, so that all of your support dollars flow directly to the festival.
This year our festival fundraiser is inspired by the simple idea of the influence exerted by both Cthulhu and the King in Yellow on dreamers like us. The unreleased T-shirt and lapel pin design will incorporate this ideal, as well as the poster art, book covers, and special limited edition items like cards, boxes, and glassware from the artisans that surround the event.
We’re launching the campaign first with placeholder art only - none of the art you see right now is the actual art - but we’ll soon be releasing all the designs for shirts, lapel pins, and new add-ons throughout the campaign, so join our Substack for more announcements, and keep an eye out for pictures of in-progress and finalized artworks from our community of creators.
As always, thank you for your much-needed support for this 3-decade-long event in beautiful Portland, OR.
To stay up to date with the campaign, join our Substack.
The 2025 Award Winners!
2025 Award winners!
And the 2025 winners are:
- Best Feature: A Blind Bargain, by Paul Bunnell
- Best Short: "Stargazer" by Justin Robert Vinall
- Best Adaptation: "The Outsider" by A. Burnett
- Audience Choice: "There is No Anti-memetics Division" by Adria Lang
- Best Screenplay: "His Father's House" by Kenneth Lawrence
-
Screenplay Finalists:
- "Slumber" by Jared Michael Delaney
- "Black Dog Burrows" by Jchon Perkins
- "The Pit" by Duncan B. Putney
- Lovecraft Under the Gun: "Popthulhu" by Trash People From the Dump
In addition to the Film and Screenplay Awards, we host a Lovecraftian MicroFiction contest each year. The top winners get published in a limited edition book along with that year's Challenge From Beyond, although this year's book ended up being more of an anthology to go along with the Cthulhu on the High Seas theme. The book will be available on arkhambazaar.com soon!
The 2026 Microfiction contest winners are:
"Windows" by Erik Gorka (overall winner)
"Under the Lake" by Matt Sprague
"The Black Sybil" by Russell W. Bynum
"The Coffee House Illuminati" by Brian Garbe
"It's a Job" by Emilio T. Jasso
"02/02/2020" by Aaron Ostrum
"Blemish" by James McRobert
"Blackberry, Blackberry" by David Haas
"The Room in the Library" by Chad Antil
"Floaters" by Jason Bulmahn
"The Second Act" by Kai R. Hastur
"Bite Your Little Toes" by Tim Uren
"The Necropocrypha" by Rick Hutchins
"A New King is Born" by Josef B. Wilke
"I Remember" by Bob Brinkman
"Star 25" by Pat Harrigan
"Terra Sing" by MM DeHart
"Alice" by Felicia Martinez
"Warm Cup of Void" by Luke Zwanziger
"Former Occupants" by Vincent J. Molina
Congratulations to all the filmmakers and screenwriters involved in this year's festival!
Get Deluxe Ticket Packages - Annual Kickstarter Fundraising Campaign!
Our annual Kickstarter Fundraising campaign for the in-person festival September 19-21st in Portland, OR and our separate streaming event December 5-9th on Eventive is open now!
In the Kickstarter:
- You can pledge for the in-person event which takes place September 19-21st on all 3 screens of the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR
- You can also pledge for Deluxe tickets the streaming event December 5-9th. Available to stream worldwide. (Plain streaming tickets will be available later.)
- Regular general admission tickets for the Portland event will be available soon through the Hollywood Theatre (with member pricing) and the HPLFF website
Pledge for VIP Experiences, meet our Guests of Honor filmmaker DAVID PRIOR (AM1200, The Empty Man), and author CASSANDRA KHAW (Hammers on Bone, Nothing But Blackened Teeth), see 50+ short and feature films, attend author readings, panel discussions, live performances, and more!
BACK THE CAMPAIGN before it ends on Sunday, September 7th, 8 pm Pacific Time.
NEW Dates for the 2025 H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR
The 30th Annual H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival is now taking place September 19-21st on all three screens of the Hollywood Theatre.
Originally scheduled two weeks later, the Hollywood Theatre encountered a booking issue with an upcoming program that is critical to their work and fundraising for the Hollywood historic film district project. The Hollywood Theatre needs to commit to a full run of the program with multiple day/night showings for several weeks without interruption, which interferes with our festival.
The kind folk at the Hollywood did their best to work with the studio to maintain our original dates, but it simply could not work with their requirements. The Hollywood has been a two decade plus partner of the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, hosting us since 2001, and has become a beloved community hub for the event. We considered - with the Hollywood’s assistance - another venue to maintain the original dates. However, no other theater in Portland has the combination of enough space and multiple auditoriums to accommodate our programming (as well as special super secret 30th anniversary events we have planned), and their amazing and meticulous staff, whom ensure that the festival not only showcases the exceptional quality of new and classic Cosmic Horror on film, but also provide the comfortable and friendly base of operations for our community that you have all come to love about the Hollywood Theatre.
We believe in the Hollywood, in the work they’re doing, including the development of the historic film district, and that that work is important for the city, and the future of all events that take place at the beautiful and historic Hollywood Theatre, including ours.
Most importantly, they believe in us. We can’t wait to show you what we have in store this September, for the 30th Anniversary H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival! Mark the new dates on your calendar, and keep every one of those eyes open for news!
2024 Streaming Edition begins this Friday, October 18
H. P. LOVECRAFT FILM FESTIVAL INVADES YOUR LIVING ROOM WITH COSMIC HORRORS!
The H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival® of Cosmic Horror Streaming Edition goes Live this Friday, October 18th, with 50 Independent Cosmic Horror Films!
Lovers of Weird Tales and Cosmic Horror can binge watch over 14 hours of films, including 6 blocks of Short Films, 3 Feature Films - including the Best Feature Award Winner, Dream Eater, PLUS bonus content with Filmmaker Q&As, Author Readings, Panel Discussions, and the Keynote by Guest of Honor Aaron Moorhead (The Endless, Something in the Dirt).
Highlights include the World Premiere of feature film THE LETTER, a lush, Lovecraftian horror, set in 1930s Dunwich, the Best Feature Award winner DREAM EATER (Canada), a terrifying found footage film by Alex Lee Williams, Jay Drakulic, and Mallory Drumm, and VOIDCALLER (Sweden), by Nils Alatalo, a beautifully stark and chilling artful cosmic horror feature.
This year’s short films are an expansive lineup of literary adaptations of stories by Lovecraft and his contemporaries like Edgar Allan Poe, PLUS original Weird tales and Cosmic Horror from Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Sweden, Turkey, UK, and the US, representing the wide diversity of filmmakers creating cosmic horror cinema today!
The streaming program is available to viewers anywhere in the world! Passes are on sale through the festival’s Eventive portal at https://hplfilmfestival.eventive.org/passes/buy and include access to all streaming extras.
See the full Film list (streaming)
Annual Kickstarter Fundraiser is Live! (ends 9/22)
Our annual Kickstarter Fundraising campaign for the in-person festival Oct 4-6th in Portland, OR and our separate streaming event Oct 18-22nd on Eventive is open now!
In the Kickstarter:
- You can pledge for the in-person event which takes place October 4-6th on all 3 screens of the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR
- You can also pledge for Deluxe tickets the streaming event October 18-22nd. Available to stream worldwide. (Plain streaming tickets will be available later.)
- Regular general admission tickets for the Portland event will be available soon through the Hollywood Theatre and the HPLFF website
Pledge for VIP Experiences, meet our Guest of Honor Aaron Moorhead (Resolution, The Endless, Synchronic), see 50+ short and feature films, attend author readings, panel discussions, live performances, and more!
BACK THE CAMPAIGN before it ends on Sunday, September 22nd, 8 pm Pacific Time.
Be Part of the 2024 Festival! Panel Pitches, Author Readings, and Presentation Requests are now open.
Interested in participating in Literary programming at this year's H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival?
Apply for Author Reading spots, Pitch a Panel discussion, or apply to give a scholarly or entertaining Presentation or Performance !
2024 Lovecraftian MicroFiction Contest is open for entries
An Annual Festival Tradition
Each year since 2014 we have held a Lovecraftian MicroFiction Contest, taking entries from authors from all over the world! The winning entries are published in a small book with the Challenge From Beyond for that year. We began this as a way to engage and include more creators in the Cosmic Horror genre, and the proceeds support the Festival directly.
What is it?
Micro Fiction is very short prose fiction. Smaller than Flash Fiction but bigger than a haiku. Usually 500 words or less. There are some famous short short stories, including Hemingway’s - For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.
For our Lovecraftian Micro Fiction contest, we look for Cosmic Horror, Weird Fiction, or Speculative or Science Fiction with a Horror twist, as well as horror or ghost stories with an uncanny tone.
According to Lovecraft, “The true weird tale has something more than secret murder, bloody bones, or a sheeted form clanking chains according to rule. A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain--a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.”
Lovecraft himself wrote some extremely short fiction. "Memory," "What the Moon Brings," and "Ex Oblivione" are examples. Micro Fiction is a fun way to explore a genre or topic in a challenging way.
Can you write a complete story in this limited amount of space? By complete story, we mean a character, situation, beginning, middle, and end. Not a vignette, not a character study, but a story.
What do I get if I win?
- The winning authors will be published in a book with the current year's Challenge From Beyond! Winning authors will receive 2 complimentary copies of the book.
- The overall winner will be invited to participate in the 2024 Challenge From Beyond round robin story project with some of the finest modern Lovecraftian Authors! (Past authors include Molly Tanzer, Joseph Pulver, Sr., Wilum Pugmire, Nick Mamatas, Ross Lockhart, Cody Goodfellow, Pete Rawlik, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, Gemma Files, Lee Zumpe, Selena Chambers, Nadia Bulkin, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Tim Pratt.) Participation is not mandatory if you win.
- The overall winner, if planning to attend this year's H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR, will have an author reading slot reserved for them so they can read their story at the festival! (this is optional)
How to Submit
You can submit up to 5 entries by going to the contest entry page on ArkhamBazaar.com
Rules, Terms and Conditions
- Stories must be 500 words or less. Entries of more than 500 words will be disqualified with no refund and will not be read. Please check your word count before submitting! Most word processing programs have a built in word counter. There are also web sites for this, like wordcounter.net
- All entries must be English language.
- Stories should not require any special formatting besides normal paragraph breaks. We're looking for content, not visual formatting.
- All entries must be written by you. You may not submit another author’s work. Your original stories only, please.
- Your entry must contain your legal name, your author name (if different), and story title.
- FILE FORMAT should be a text file (.txt) or rich text format (.rtf)
- Your file name should be "your name-MFC2024-#of entries". For example if you submit 2 stories, your file name should look like this: JaneDoe-MFC2024-2.rtf
- Deadline for entries is AUGUST 9, 2024. Winning entries will be notified no later than SEPTEMBER 4, 2024
- The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival® & CthulhuConTM reserves the right to publish the winning entries in a limited edition book with the current year's Challenge From Beyond, which may be sold to cover printing costs. All submissions may be used for promotional purposes. Authors of the top 10 entries will receive 2 complimentary copies of the book, for which shipping in the US is free, and outside the US may incur a small shipping fee. Additional copies will be available for purchase.
- Overall winner will be invited to participate in the 2025 Challenge From Beyond round robin story project, which will take place in summer 2025.
Award Winners for the 28th Annual H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival
The 28th Annual H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival took place in person at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, OR October 6-8th. Filmmaker Guest of Honor Rebekah McKendry (Glorious), Author Guest of Honor Clay McLeod Chapman (What Kind of Mother), and Special Guest screenwriter Dennis Paoli (Re-Animator, Suitable Flesh) joined us for the weekend! During the annual Awards presentation on Sunday evening 10/8, Award Statuettes were presented for these categories:
Best Feature Film went to Suitable Flesh, written by Dennis Paoli, directed by Joe Lynch, produced by Barbara Crampton, and starring Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Jonathan Schaech, Bruce Davison, and Barbara Crampton. Adapted from H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Thing on the Doorstep," this neo-noir, erotic body-swapping horror thriller is bloody, it's horny, and at times humorous, but it stays true to the spirit of the original story. The A-list cast gives their all, with some of them playing multiple characters as the Wizard Waite claims each of his victims's bodies.
The script, the gender flipped characters (at Joe Lynch's behest!), excellent performances, and careful balance between horror, gore, sex, and humor proved to be a winning combination! Suitable Flesh also went home with the Audience Choice award!
Best Short Film went to "Whisper in the Static" directed by Heather Humpleman, written by Nathan Carter. A young woman hears a mysterious noise over the radio and pursues it with dangerous consequences. The premise, performances, direction, photography, editing, and sound design all coalesce in this short film to deliver an original and fresh take on cosmic horror.
Best Adaptation was awarded to Alain Fournier's adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Temple". Set in WWII, the crew of a German u-boat on a mission in the North Atlantic witness strange phenomena on board. After an inexplicable explosion in the engine room, the submarine slowly sinks to the abyssal depths, while madness decimates the submariners. This faithful adaptation of the story is brought to life with beautifully rendered CG animation, convincing voice acting, and stellar sound design.
We had five finalists in our annual Screenplay competition:
- Cellar Door by Sean Buttimer - A band of squatters inhabit an abandoned house only to find that the very hungry former owner still occupies the cellar.
- Inherent Dread by Steven Jackley - Emily has an obsession with the rocker girl across the hall; after she becomes estranged from her druggy boyfriend, Emily steps in to help this new friend when she gets pricked with a used needle leaving her hand infected... and possessed.
- The Drowned People by Thomas O'Malley - Fisherman Patrick Hennessey and his wife, Maggie, live an idyllic life with their two children in the remote New England fishing community of Folly Cove on isolated Great Saucauset Peninsula. On the eve of the town’s 400-year anniversary, a covenant their Pilgrim ancestors made with an ancient evil has come due.
- Unspeakable: Beyond the Wall of Sleep by Chad Ferrin - A sequel to Chad Ferrin's Unspeakable combined with H. P. Lovecraft's "Beyond the Wall of Sleep."
WINNER Best Screenplay: The Secret Skin by Wendy N. Wagner. When struggling art teacher June Vogel returns to her family estate, she discovers her niece has uncanny powers and that the house she fled is haunted. But just as June begins to make peace with the place, her newly remarried brother and his bride cut short their honeymoon, turning the family -- and the house -- into turmoil. A classic Gothic horror is updated with Lovecraftian cosmic horror when June realizes just what it is that's haunting the house, and how her family's legacy plays into the horrific events that have blessed and cursed her lineage.
Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour Film Contest
Each year, teams of filmmakers are challenged to make a Lovecraftian short film in just 3 days, including a required prop and line of dialogue. Each team had to use a sponge as a prop, and use the line of dialogue "Abomination of abominations." (from "The Thing on the Doorstep") Four teams completed this year's competition, and were screened at the festival, with the audience deciding the winning film. This year's winner was "Abomination" by team Trash People From The Bump. This monster kid inspired film utilized stop motion, live action, original songs (written and performed by Theoddra Monstar and Aunt Gore) and a real live turtle, winning the audience's hearts and the Award!
Lovecraftian Microfiction Contest Winners
The 2023 Lovecraftian Microfiction contest challenged authors to write a complete Lovecraftian story in 500 words or less. The 10 winners and 3 honorable mentions for this year's contest are:
- OVERALL WINNER: Maxwell Marais - "The First Act"
- Khloe Rhodes - "Call of the Ram"
- Bob Brinkman - "The Devourers Beneath"
- Maria Huning - "Clarias"
- Ish Galvan - "Rep"
- Jillian Rae Young - "Burning Feather"
- David Haas - "Dreams of a Mountain"
- Gary Butterfield - "The Pale Green Shed"
- Kristi Petersen Schoonover - "Independence"
- Rick Hutchins - "Ambergris Morning"
Honorable Mentions:
- Erik Gorka - "Going Home"
- Felicia Martinez - "Where Go the Beloved Cats of Ulthar"
- Brian Garbe - "Marty"
Congratulations to all of the winners!
Mark your calendars for the next H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR, October 4-6, 2024!
Submissions will be open soon on https://filmfreeway.com/HPLovecraftFilmFestival
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