Rate your stay at MotelX2013!

It was a pleasure to JoRafCinema to receive press accreditation as international press for  the MotelX2013, the Lisbon Horror Film Festival, taking place from September 11th to 15th 2013.

Welcome to MotelX 2013!

Located at the Cinema Sao Jorge in the heart of the Old Lisbon, MotelX shows the best of what was done in the horror genre over the past two years, as well as some thrillers, special interest movies and retrospectives.

We had a good week at MotelX2013. The reviews of all the movies we have seen there can be found under this link.
We found some weaknesses to the festival: 

• not very well organised, for getting the accreditation nor the tickets. We received different guidelines in the first three days. In the end we managed to get all the tickets. But this will get better every year with the experience. The festival is still quite young. Only the 7th.
• the public went out of the theater before the end of the questions to the director of Open grave. This does not show the best interest to the cinema... For the opening, it was a big flaw!
• the sound during some movies was saturated and this was disturbing. 
• the queue was long and not organised by any line for example, so that it was not so easy to know where to stand in line

We found some strengths to the festival:

• the helpers are extremely friendly and supportive. For any request, they really help you. For instance we missed getting places for the Master class with Tobe Hooper. Sold out! But the festival crew managed to get us inside the otherwise full room.
• the retrospectives were interesting for both large public (e.g. Ring, The Texas chainsaw Massacre), for young public (e.g. Mighty Joe Young) and cinephiles (e.g. Eaten alive). This should help increasing the local interest to the festival. 
• for the small location available, the decoration (posters, objects related to horror movies), the bar, the terrace and the small shop were good. And the fresh limonade was excellent!

All in all we had a good time, but we do not plan to visit this festival again in the near future. The selection was not nearly as good as at the Munich Fantasy Filmfest, the organization far from the one of the Udine Far East Film Festival, and the mood nothing compared to the one in Brussels.
And there are so many other festivals and places to visit!
But keep up the good work MotelX, it is nice to have such festivals in as many countries as possible, and the organizers show a real motivation to improve things and attract more public. So if you want to try a festival, we can recommend this one for the strenths discussed above. And we keep an eye on it, because the weaknesses of the festival can be solved with a bit of experience.

JoRafCinema facing the MotelX 2013 monster

The large venue for the MotelX: Cinema Sao Jorge

The main room of the Cinema Sao Jorge is very large, but was sold out for events like the double feature The Conjuring / VHS 2

A nice horror and thriller selection for the MotelX 2013

The cinema room in the Palacio Foz, filled with children for the projection of Might Joe Young

JoRafCinema was proud to have received the press accreditation for MotelX 2013.

In discussion with Gonzalo López-Gallego (left), director from Open Grave

Tobe Hooper was animating an interesting although classical Masterclass.

One of the topics was of course The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.