Hitting screenings tomorrow. New Jackie Chah. Woo Hoo. Forrest Whitiker Gala and Dinner w/ uber commercial producer Mark Schimmel.

Picked up photo passes for Julie and myself. Trying to get a screener to Del Toro at his special event here at the festival. Would be great if he saw it. :)

Going to CIFF Premiere tonight. Defiled and I are all over the press promo. So cool.

Subway Station @ Home

Here's another poster. On my local train line. Love it. A friend (who shall not be named) has volunteered to liberate one for me. The poster, that is - not the purple punk girl Ha Ha.

Brian Shaw texts me that he's happy with the press. Wait 'til he sees what's coming next. :)

Reel Chicago Showcase

This just in. Local webzine Reel Chicago promotes the "Illinoise" Filmmakers and we are there front and center. Thanks, Ruth. Really appreciate it.

Go to http://www.reelchicago.com/story.cfm?storyID=3005 for all the details.

Sent out screener to Santa Cruz Film Festival for consideration thanks to CIFF. What a great way to promote The Defiled

Just set up mobile blogging. The festival starts tomorrow!!!(y)

Defiled added to Hallowscreen, Florida

This just in! We've been slotted into the Halloween Schedule in Sarasota, Florida for the inaugural film festival HALLOWSCREEN.

It's great to support horror themed festivals and I'm making it a real priority in 2011 to play as many film festivals as possible with our film. Contact me here if you want to play THE DEFILED at your horror themed event.

For more info on HALLOWSCREEN, please visit http://hallowscreen.blogspot.com/

Bigger, better - Cooler!

We're everywhere!! From banners hanging on poles to large bus posters in the downtown Loop and beyond, the CIFF posters can be seen throughout Chicago. Am so happy to be on this artwork as it just keeps us out in front!

As seen on the CTA

Finally I catch up with the elusive CIFF poster my students and friends have all seen. That's Brian Shaw and Kathleen Lawlor in the film to the right of the logo of the Chicago Int. Film Festival. Thanks Mimi and all the lovely folks at CIFF. I've never been treated so professionally and kindly. Comp tickets for cast and crew, full passes for the stars - this is a film festival done right. Could not recommend more.

New Promotional Picture - Julian Grant

New promo pix for THE DEFILED. My first time in greasepaint. I did the makeup application myself and had a grand old time doing it. Love the tone and texture of this stuff. It really is like painting on a canvas.

New Critical Essay - Just Received

On The Ambitions of The Defiled
Zoran Samardzija

Good Horror films manage both to scare us and disturb us with imagery that channels deep-seated psychological and social anxieties. Then there are the even more intellectually ambitious ones. In addition to viscerally thrilling their audience, they inspire philosophical reflection about how cinema, and especially the Horror genre, mediate and transform our understanding of the world and history itself. In a post-1960s North American context, the two masters of this brand of intellectually challenging Horror film have been George A. Romero and David Cronenberg. Romero is obviously best known for his Night of the Living Dead (1968) and five other zombie films. As influential as those have been, for me Romero’s masterpiece remains his film Martin (1977). Martin is both a shocking viewing experience and a complex examination of vampire myths, alienation, and belief. In addition, it provides an almost unparalleled ethnographic record of American economic decay in the late 1970s, right before Reganism came along to usher in the final victory of financialization and corporatism over life in the United States. Cronenberg, too, in his best films mixes the visceral with the philosophical. No matter how many times I view his Videodrome (1983), I always manage to be disgusted by its imagery and intellectually enthralled by its vision of a world where media and medium and external reality become indistinguishable.
Julian Grant’s The Defiled firmly belongs to this tradition of intellectual Horror films perfected by George A. Romero and David Cronenberg. Rest assured it has enough gruesome imagery to churn the stomach of even the most desensitized of Horror film fans. Yet, the opening scenes of the film immediately alert us that The Defiled has far more ambitious and eccentric aims than just revolting its audience. With its beautiful blue-toned black and white cinematography, it certainly does not look like other post-apocalyptic zombie/ virus films to which the audience may be accustomed. Even better, The Defiled has no intelligible dialogue. Why not you ask? This is because Grant subverts the conventions of the zombie/virus sub-genre by giving us a zombie who is the main protagonist of the film. Recall that George A. Romero flirted with the idea in his underrated Land of the Dead (2005) with the African-American gas-station attendant zombie who is more compelling than most of the humans in the film. Without spoiling anything about the plot, suffice it to say that The Defiled ultimately does not ask us to identify with a zombie protagonist for the purposes of satire or direct social commentary. Instead, it invites its audience to revert back to older historical forms of Horror film spectatorship: to empathize with the humanity within the monster rather than reveal the monstrous within the human.
For all its compelling subversions of the modern post-apocalyptic zombie film, there is something, therefore, also old-fashioned about The Defiled. Rather than replicating the nihilism of recent Horror films that imagine the end of humanity without mourning its demise, it asks us to reconsider our origins and fate as humans—origins that it implicitly filters through the lens of film history. The Defiled, in other words, contains several homages and references to a diverse spectrum of films: Frankenstein (1932), George A. Romero’s aforementioned zombie films, and Eraserhead (1977) are but a few that stood out to me. I was even reminded of the apes from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as I watched an especially de-evolved zombie early in the film. Such homages, however, are not just empty citations. Instead, cinema itself functions as the historical past in The Defiled in order to trace how we have arrived at our own era of economic crisis and to remind us that the catastrophes that beckon need not mark the end to human empathy.

Getting ready for CIFF

We're all thrilled to have the film WORLD PREMIERE at CIFF. What an honor. For years, I had a poster from their Monster Movie Marathon in my edit studio in Canada and I am excited to be part of this years line-up. I'm stopped on the street and at Columbia College Chicago all the time by students, faculty and well-wishers all looking forward to the three screenings. Am shooting the DVD commentary this Friday and look forward to sitting down with stars Brian Shaw and Kathleen Lawlor and revisiting the film.

Defiled Screening Updates

THE DEFILED - WORLD PREMIERE AT THE CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: Oct 13-15-17. BRAM STOKER (UK) Oct 14, BUFFALO SCREAMS (NY) Oct 22. For more information, please visit: www.thedefiled.com

For Immediate Release:
Sept 22/10

THE DEFILED - WORLD PREMIERE AT THE CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: Oct 13-15-17.

THE DEFILED - USA, Black & White, 100 Minutes Written & Directed by Julian Grant

In a post apocalyptic world, science and technology have backfired leaving unfathomable destruction and a permanently diseased planet in its wake. A virus is mutating the human race turning innocent survivors into mindless cannibals. In a savage future world devoid of hope, a man infected with the deadly viral disease must cope with the burden of a new born son, ensuring his survival. Though he is infected, he does not allow his growing desire for human flesh to overcome his responsibility to the newborn. Along the road, traveling from town to town, he saves an unaffected woman from a certain death by facing down her perpetrators. Ultimately she joins him on his odyssey, a journey through hell on earth in search of a safe haven in which they can perhaps start a life together, both becoming committed to doing whatever it takes to make sure the child survives.

WORLD PREMIERE

Chicago International Film Festival,
October 13, 2010 10:15 pm
October 15, 2010 11.15 pm
October 17, 2010 9:30 pm
http://www.chicagofilmfestival.com/films_and_schedule/movie.php?show=defiled_the


Bram Stoker Film Festival, Whitby England,
Thursday October 14, 2010
http://www.bramstokerfilmfestival.com/programme.php

Buffalo Screams,
Friday October 22, 2010
http://www.buffaloscreams.com/news.html#defiled

For more information, please contact www.thedefiled.com

Advance Poster

Just a few days (hopefully) away from sharing the big festival news for thebFall. Have a number of really great showcases lined up and more events getting ready. Am prepping the sale site on Amazon and have a number of very interested distributors making enquiries and the like. All good signs. Here's a look at the advance art for the film and the video box. Confirmed festival names are hidden right now until I get the go ahead to say I'm officially in the film festival.

Ooops. Looks like my iPad Wong let me access it right now. Will post again

Film Festival Updates

As the summer winds on, we continue looking for the right pal e to be seen first in the world. Our film is so unique and so beautiful. It's really not for the casual film viewer or the faint of heart. We have two big premieres in the USA and the UK in October and I just want to show the darn thing right now. The video masters in HD CAM look fantastic and I really owe Columbia College Chicago a big shout out for mastering for me.

So keep watching these spaces. There will be more information as we get closer to screenings and I will report live from Britain and right here in Chicago at the appropriate times.

The Defiled - V2 Trailer

This just in from Laura Madalinski, a talented Chicago editor, who created this spot for online and broadcast sources. We're actively submitting THE DEFILED to film festivals worldwide and have our UK Premiere set in October at The Bram Stoker Festival (http://www.bramstokerfilmfestival.com/) in Whitby. I'll travel to that one to present the film in person. So, keep looking out for these posts as we wait for the word from over twenty-five festivals worldwide.

Check out our first trailer: The Defiled - Trailer

Check out this video: The Defiled - Trailer

Screening Copies

For those cast and crew that cannot make tonight's event at CCC - please drop me a line for screening copies of the film.

Sneak Preview Tonight

Well, this is it - the first public look at our film. I'm optimistic that the work will be well received. I must thank everyone who worked on the picture for their hard work and dedication. I believe that they will be happy. Screening copies for cast and crew tonight. I think we'll have a good turnout.

Sneak Preview Announced

Well, the day is finally here. Detailed below is the official press release for our film. I am thrilled by the final results and I hope you will all attend. Please feel free to bring family and friends and anyone interested. If I don't see you in person until then, I just want to let you know how much your contributions mean to me and my work. I am forever indebted to you. Here's the poop.


For Immediate Release:
1/6/10

Julian Grant to SNEAK PREVIEW his new feature film, THE DEFILED at Columbia College Chicago's Film Row Theatre on January 25, 2010 at 7:00 PM.

Filmmaker Julian Grant will sneak preview his new fine art/horror feature film, "The Defiled" on Monday, January 25th at Columbia College Chicago.

"When I relocated to Chicago last year, my goal was to start making independent films outside of my regular comfort zone. I had spent twenty years making movies for theatrical and television distribution and wanted to create new and exciting cinema beyond my regular output. THE DEFILED is my first film that speaks to these sensibilities."

Set in a near distant future where an N1HI style of virus has decimated the populace, an infected man, his new-born child and an enigmatic beauty must seek food and shelter in this world-turned-wrong. THE DEFILED was shot on location in Chicagoland, IL and neighboring La Porte, Indiana.

For more information, please visit www.juliangrant.com or contact Julian Grant at jgesq@yahoo.ca or 773-968-4676.

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