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GRRL HAUS screening at Lakeside Film Festival
Horror, Suspense & Camp Short Films!
Nothing is what it seems—and everyone’s losing it, just a little. Get ready for an offbeat ride through paranoia, monsters, AI chaos, climate apocalypse, and beach party bloodbaths. Whether you're into soul-sucking water demons, suspicious dinner parties, or 16mm nostalgia soaked in sun and doom, this lineup will leave you laughing, unnerved, and wondering if that sound in your headphones is… someone—or something—trying to make contact. Lakeside Film Festival Vol.11
presented by Mobile Kino Berlin 4/7 - 6/7 Klingemühle 4, 15848 Friedland, OT Chossewitz, Brandenburg, Germany |
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Beach-O
Leah Smith and Karen Lawler 11:00 An homage to the campy beach movies of the 1960s, set within a late 90s time capsule, Beach-O is a rockin’ retro romp. This 16mm film follows Greg and Lesley as they enjoy a summer’s day at the beach. After they befriend a gang of local partiers, their day takes an unexpected turn when everyone gets hungry… This long awaited music centric film (shot in 1998, and finally completed in 2024) features performances by DC and Boston indie rock legends The Make-Up, Victory At Sea, and The Wicked Farleys. Leah Smith is a filmmaker based in Austin, TX. With a foundation in experimental filmmaking, she has created rhythmic live action pieces like “Jump” (super 8), and also co-wrote and directed the music centric short “Beach-O” (16mm). She is the co-author of the book Dirt Cheap, Real Good: A Highway Guide to Thrift Stores in the Washington DC Area (2004 Capital Books). After moving to Austin in 2005, Leah opened a shop and gallery space, called The Opera House, where she promoted and contributed to the local underground art and music scenes. Nowadays she has returned to her roots in filmmaking, striving to make films cheaply that she can create in her living room. She uses stop-motion animation techniques as seen in “Quilt” and “Cat Picnic/Flower Picnic”. Her future plans include alter ego Infinite Fontaine’s (Instagram @Infinite_fontaine) comedic experiments with paper cut-out animation and to eventually develop a short animated series. Karen Lawler is a versatile filmmaker, producer, and artist. She has produced over 50 commercials for major global brands, working collaboratively with production companies, advertising agencies and direct-to-client. She is currently the Director of Production at Hornet, a design studio and commercial production company. Her films have been showcased at prestigious international festivals and venues including the Melbourne International Film Festival, Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Split Film Festival in Croatia, Darklight Festival in Dublin, Anchorage International Film Festival, New Zealand Film Archive and Anthology Film Archive. Her short film Dress Up earned Best Narrative at DIGIt 2006 and was released by Cinequest Distribution in November 2006. Karen’s multimedia installations have been featured at notable performance venues such as the Interferences Biennale, The Kitchen in New York, and Le Lieu Unique in Nantes, France. She also founded EXchange, a short film showcase that traveled across twelve cities in ten countries, from Accra, Ghana to Guadalajara, Mexico from 1999 to 2004. |
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Yellow
Angel Garcia 13:50 Cariño struggles to have a good time on a trip to New York with her father who’s overzealous attitude and wandering eye are getting on her nerves. Her attitude alchemizes into an anxious spiral when she starts to notice strange women watching her. Angel Garcia is a Cuban American filmmaker and tattooer from Miami, FL. Their work often showcases a cultural aspect of their hometown and background in a way that is meant to disrupt stereotypical Latinx stories. |
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2nd Day & the End of the World
Sara Koppel 12:28 Is a story of dysfunctional family life. About powerlessness in society & processes of detachment. Responsibility, presence, attentive & awareness, in the presence of natural disasters in an increasingly totalitarian world. About self-discovery, loneliness & body disorders in a Climate Catastrophic Contemporary Universe. But also about love & hope for the future to be. Sara Koppel is a Danish animation artist working quite analogously with hand-drawn on paper Animation. She makes independent Animation Shortfilms & experiments a lot with AR-Augmented Reality Print-Exhibitions & Animation Installations. Filmography 2nd Day & the End of the World 2025 The RUBYYY Collection 2023 Embraces & the Touch of Skin 2019 1st Day & Next Minute 2017 Seriously Deadly Silence 2015 Memories of an Absent Presence 2014 Little Vulvah & her Clitoris Awareness 2013 Naked Love - Ea’s Garden 2012 Appetizer for Naked Love 2012 Walking between each other & it self… 2011 |
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Climate Control
Sarah Lasley 15:00 A metafictional comedy about the intersection of the climate crisis and generative AI. A director making a documentary about the perils of fossil fuel extraction is consistently subverted by an AI agent that wants to tell a generic love story. Made in collaboration with my Gen Z students, the film looks at generational responses to the climate crisis through an absurdist lens, connecting the extraction of natural resources to the extraction of our human data and the extraction of our attention in this post-information era. Through grant support from Cal Poly Humboldt, 30 students were hired at professional rates and occupied all production roles both in front of and behind the camera. Sarah Lasley is an award-winning filmmaker from Louisville, Kentucky living and working in Eureka, California. Her no-budget films critique our current socio-political moment with absurdist humor. She has screened internationally at festivals, museums, and galleries, such as Slamdance, Ann Arbor, Cairo Video Festival, 25 FPS Film Festival, Les Instants Video, Katonah Museum of Art, and the Wrong Bienniale. She holds an MFA from Yale School of Art and a BFA from University of Louisville and was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2004. |
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Water Dog
Christina Kelly Holmes 10:52 A disillusioned millennial man bumps into an old classmate and meets his new wife – but there's something off about her. Questioning his sanity, the man brings his girlfriend to dinner with the couple. Christina Kelly Holmes is a 2020 graduate of the screenwriting program at The American Film Institute Conservatory and the 2020 recipient of the Russo Brothers' AGBO/AFI Development Grant and the 2021 AFI Writers' Room Ready Award. Her identity as a first-generation Romanian and mixed-race woman, and her experiences as a third-culture kid, influence her storytelling. Christina was born in New Jersey, raised in London, and received a bachelor's degree in sociology from Colorado College. After working as a strategist for various startups in the tech industry, she redirected her career toward writing. She was most recently a Writers Assitant on Amazon's CITADEL and teaches screenwriting at Chaffey College. Christina's short film WATER DOG was completed in May 2024 and is currently in submission for festival consideration. It is based on her short story by the same name published in Bloodletter Magazine in March 2024. |
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11:11
Sophia Gordon 1:58 A study on synchronicities and phenomena of high strangeness, "11:11" examines the connections between initiation, ritual, and the universal sequences surrounding us. Pushing the boundaries of technology, Sophia Gordon’s work spans a variety of mediums, including video, performance, installation, music, animation, and illustration. Glitch art and circuit bending, as well as the compatibility of old and new technologies, are prominent features within her practice. Her projects primarily focus on mental health, concepts of cybernetics, and chaos magick. Sophia graduated from Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA in Film and Television Production. There, she discovered she was a video artist. Over the last nine years, she has developed a style that combines lo-fi tape formats, circuit bending, and television broadcasting techniques. Currently residing in the Greater Nashville Area, Sophia continues to bring her aesthetics to new mediums and genres. She is the founder and operator of the experimental broadcasting company TeleUphoria Media Network, where she curates two themed channels (Miller’s Grove Public Access and Channel 43). She is also a member of the transgressive art collective Trance//Furnace. |
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Mondegreen
Linda Mai Green 21:31 While on a rural retreat, a sound artist becomes obsessed with eerie sounds in her recordings—until a conspiracy theorist warns that she’s provoking dangerous paranormal forces. As she delves deeper into deciphering their meaning, she confuses discovery and delusion. Linda Mai Green is a writer/director based in San Francisco, California. Drawing on her background in art history, literature, and her biracial Vietnamese identity, Linda’s films investigate the psyches of women in surreal, visually striking worlds. She is a 2024/2025 SFFilm Filmhouse Resident, an alum of the Eastern Oregon Film Festival Filmmaker Residency, and she has been a recipient of grants from The Redford Center and mentorships with Unlock Her Potential and #startwith8hollywood. She has a BA from Stanford in German literature and an MA in Art History from NYU. |
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Cold Feet
Anna Vecellio 7:53 A woman struggling with intimacy invites her girlfriend over for a sleepover, only to discover there's something much scarier than emotional availability lurking under her bed. Anna Vecellio is a queer, southern screenwriter whose work explores the nature of identity through a genre lens. She began her career in film festivals, working as a short film and screenplay programmer at the Atlanta Film Festival. In 2019, she moved to LA to attend the American Film Institute, where she received an MFA in screenwriting. Anna is a Nicholl semifinalist and an alum of the Film Independent Episodic Lab - where she received an Alfred P. Sloan Grant for her historical pilot Mary Mallon. She was also awarded the AFI Writers Room Ready Award for her horror pilot Lost Prophet. Her writing has also been honored by ScreenCraft, WeScreenplay, Austin Film Festival, Stowe Story Labs, and NYC Midnight. Anna recently made her directorial debut with her short film Cold Feet. |
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The Return of the Näcken
Cassandra Sechler 21:31 The Return of the Näcken is a gothic fairytale and love letter to storytelling and mythology. It is a surreal fantastical journey into the life of a forlorn creature who must feast on human souls to survive, introducing a new spin to traditional water demon myths. The story explores the unforgiving nature of mortality, the cruelty and loneliness of immortality, the sensuality of death, and the pain of being a monster. Cassandra Sechler is a conceptual artist based in San Francisco, California. Her background and interests are in fine art photography, sculpture, and psychology which aid in providing her viewer with expressionistic works that are both personal and poetic. The nature of gender, sexuality, identity, dreams, technological infrastructure, society, and her place within them are often the main focus of her work. |
