The sixth annual Anomaly - The Rochester Genre Film Festival is here! Join us for 13 programs that promise a thrilling ride through 12 feature films and 24 short films for all 5 days! Try your luck, and experience the best genre cinema from around the world

Schedule Of Events:

November 6, 2024

5:00pm  -  Passholder Pickup Reception

5:00-5:45pm (directly preceding Timestalker)
Location: The Little Theatre (Theatre 1 Lobby)
Come pickup (and decorate!) your pass, mingle with your fellow film-buffs, and enjoy a baked potato bar before we kickoff opening night! (Passes can still be picked up all festival long.)

6:15pm  -  Timestalker

A bawdy reincarnation romantic-comedy about the eternal humiliation that is the search for love. Hapless heroine Agnes travels through time as she repeatedly falls for the wrong guy, dies a grim death, and gets reincarnated a century later… before meeting him again and starting the cycle anew. Her only hope in avoiding this violent fate is by finally reaching spiritual enlightenment; but how can she ever wise up when she's destined to be a fool for love? Some lessons are just too hard to learn in one single lifetime.

8:45pm  -  Battle Beyond the Stars

With art direction by a young James Cameron, an early score by James Horner (Aliens, Titanic), a screenplay by John Sayles (Lone Star) and co-directed by Roger Corman himself, Battle Beyond the Stars features a game cast — including Richard Thomas, John Saxon, Robert Vaughn, and Sybil Danning — and fun set-pieces, as our heroes scour the cosmos to recruit interplanetary mercenaries to save a peaceful home world from the evil Sador.

Don't miss the chance to see this cult-classic space opera on the big screen!

November 7, 2024

5:00pm  -  Pre-Movie Poutinerie Excursion
at Petit Poutinerie

6:00pm-7:30pm (approx.; directly preceding The Name of the Game is Kill!)
Location: Petit Poutinerie (44 Elton St, Rochester, NY 14607)
You know Anomaly loves a potato-themed outing! Meet us for dinner at Petit Poutinerie, purchase some delicious fries and other spud-friendly treats, enjoy drink specials for Anomaly ticket-and-pass-holders, and settle in for a mini-round of movie trivia, before heading over to The Dryden, a block away!

7:30pm  -  The Name of the Game is Kill!
at The Dryden Theatre

PRESENTED ON 35MM FILM! Returning for the second year in a row to the George Eastman Museum's Dryden Theatre, to uncover hidden treasures from the museum archive not typically considered for the general program.

This year's selection finds Jack Lord (famous for playing Steve McGarrett on Hawaii Five-O), as hungarian hitchhiker Sym who gets in over his head. Heading west on a deserted Arizona road, he's picked up by Mickey (Susan Strasberg), whose Jeep overheats. The two are attracted to each other immediately, so Mickey takes Sym home for the night… but her family is wary, especially when dark secrets start to be revealed.

November 8, 2024

6:00pm  -  Dead Mail

A blood-stained cry for help desperately jammed into a mailbox outside a madman's house is the thread that ends up tying together an electronics virtuoso, a fervent synthesizer fanatic, and the unorthodox investigators at a small, midwestern dead letter office sometime in the 1980s. As points of view shift and situations turn deadly, the story oscillates and amplifies as it plays its own unique tune.

9:00pm  -  Chainsaws Were Singing

An absolutely bonkers B-movie epic from Estonia, this horror-musical-comedy love letter to exploitation cinema finds new lovers separated from each other by a chainsaw killer. In their search to find each other again, they encounter maniacal locals, a dangerous forest, crazed cults, carnivorous animals, and the constant threat of dismemberment in this wild amalgamation of Monty Python meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets... Les Misérables.

November 9, 2024

11:00am  - Sinister & Spooky Saturday Shorts

The Little Theater 1

Strange, unsettling — and sometimes even touching — bite-sized tales. From students to professionals, these filmmakers showcase a variety of styles and tones, celebrating some of the best short-form genre-filmmaking this year.

Naualli
A grieving man seeks revenge, unwittingly awakening a mystical creature known as the Nagual.

Dummy!
An aspiring singer struggles to free herself from her controlling mother - a ventriloquist doll who experienced stardom in her youth.

All Kinds of Animals
Experienced hiker Hannah has an unexpected encounter after reaching the summit.

Hado
Javi, an unfaithful, powerful man, drives down a poorly lit, infrequently traveled road by night. He's returning home from a supposed work trip. In the blink of an eye, one mistake will change Javi's life forever.

Washed Up
A tired model decides to take back control of her life from her sleazy modeling agent.

Never Let You Go
A young woman's traumatic past resurfaces when a mysterious box arrives on her doorstep, setting forth a horrifying reality.

Izzy
Izzy slowly realizes that she doesn't want to admit to societal expectations anymore.

Pound for Pound
While an amateur MMA fighter struggles to make rent, he receives a mysterious offer that leads him to the dark and cult-like world of the super-rich.

Whittled Down
Carlisle has been trapped in this cabin for a long, long time. There are no doors, and the windows only open to an endless black void. With nothing to do but whittle and wait, a single thought lingers at the forefront of his mind: there's something wrong with that clock.

Inked
After Dylan's father passes away in prison, her attempts to honor his memory become eerily dark when she decides to tattoo her father's ashes into her skin. But the sentimental tribute quickly turns sinister...

We Joined a Cult
Two friends on their way to a game of kickball find themselves incessantly pressured to join an incompetent satanic cult.

The Chain
A family's life is thrown into chaos when the father doesn't return home one night.

2:00pm  -  Flow

The Little Theater 1

A wondrous journey, through realms natural and mystical, Flow follows a courageous cat after its home is devastated by a great flood. Teaming up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog to navigate a boat in search of dry land, they must rely on trust, courage, and wits to survive the perils of a newly aquatic planet. Steeped in the soaring possibilities of visual storytelling, Flow is a feast for the senses.

4:30pm  -  Sound of Love

The Little Theater 1

Cleaning worker Moriya seeks solace from his isolated existence listening to the ASMR streams of a mysterious online creator who goes by the name Akiha. Moriya's fixation on Akiha's videos threatens to destroy his personal and professional lives, but he still can't help pursuing some deeper connection. He reaches out to Akiha, and the two unexpectedly develop a relationship, first entirely online and soon IRL. But Moriya's obsession only grows, and their strange bond soon sends them down a dangerous path that just may consume them both.

8:00pm  -  Dead Talents Society

The Little Theater 1

Dying is just the beginning of one young woman's problems when she learns that the afterlife is a competitive world of celebrity scarers and desperate wannabes. Ghosts can linger in the mortal realm by competing to haunt humans, and so our rookie ghost embarks on a journey to find her own uniqueness under the tutelage of a passionate ghost talent agent and a washed-up diva, in an attempt to avoid failure — a fate in the underworld that is even worse than death.

10:30pm  -  Saturday Party
at Red White & Brew

Join Anomaly for a Saturday-night gathering at one of our favorite bars! Come chat about the day's movies! Snacks provided; drinks and additional food available for sale. Open to all Dead Talents Society ticket-holders and Anomaly Festival Passholders.

November 10, 2024

10:30am - The Severed Sun

An isolated, patriarchal church community in rural Britain is ruled over by a charismatic figure known as The Pastor. But when The Pastor's daughter murders her abusive husband, she in the process unleashes a malevolent force: a beast with shimmering white eyes and a taste for evil men. As the beast leaves a trail of gruesome carnage, suspicion and paranoia grip the village and a brutal witch hunt leads the community to spiral further into darkness

1:00pm - Rita

When 13-year-old Rita runs away from home in an attempt to escape her abusive father, she ends up in a state-run institution for troubled girls in Guatemala City. It's a place somehow even worse than the one she fled, filled with violence and assault. There, Rita finds herself at the center of an uprising by the seemingly-magical groups of girls who reside there, and are sick of being exploited.

Inspired by a tragic true story, Rita is a harrowing fairytale reminiscent of early Guillermo del Toro, acting as both a stark condemnation of a broken, unjust system and a powerful tribute to the resilience, strength, and humanity of this story's real-life inspirations.

4:15pm - A Samurai in Time

A dark and stormy night in Edo-period Japan: samurai Kosaka Shinzaemon prepares to face off against his enemy when a lightning strike knocks him unconscious. Kosaka awakens to find he's been transported to the present day film set of a samurai “jidaigeki” (period drama). Mistaken for an extra, his natural abilities get him work on more productions as a “kirareyaku,” a swordsman who specializes in being killed spectacularly on screen, while off-screen he navigates the strange world of the 21st century.

7:00pm - Universal Language

In a mysterious and surreal interzone — somewhere between Tehran, Iran and Winnipeg, Canada — characters try to free money from an ice block, lead tourists through local historic sites, quit theirs jobs to visit their mothers, reunite with old friends and new acquaintances at a Tim Hortons, and — yes — even visit the finest turkey butcher in town. Space, time and identities interweave in this incredibly unique and surreal comedy of misdirection from director Matthew Rankin

9:00pm - Closing Pizza Party

The Little Theatre (Theatre 1 Lobby)
Our annual tradition! Following our Closing Night Film, stick around for a free, laid-back pizza party celebrating the conclusion of this year's festival! Open to all ticket-holders of Universal Language and all Festival Passholders.

Date: November 6 - 10, 2024

Location:
The Little Theater, 240 East Ave Rochester, NY 14604
The Dryden Theater,  900 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607
Petit Poutinerie, 44 Elton St, Rochester, NY 14607
Red White and Brew, 147 State St, Rochester, NY 14614

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