MOTELx: Lisbon, Portugal's Horror Film Festival

Autumn 2010 saw the successful conclusion of the fourth installment of Lisbon, Portugal's annual horror film festival, MOTELx. Held in late September and early October, MOTELx not only celebrates an international selection of horror cinema with a new and classic selection of movies, but also serves to buttress the budding Portuguese interest in the now internationalized holiday of Halloween.

Launched in 2007, the festival is held by the Cineclube de Terror de Lisboa (Lisbon Horror Film Club), a registered non-profit organization and sponsored by organizations including both of the country's leading newspapers, several major hotel chains, and a major television network. With films running from early afternoon into the wee hours of the morning over the course of five days, MOTELx offers both Lisbonites and horror fans from across Portugal the chance to experience relatively obscure movies in the cinema that they ordinarily would need to order on DVD. Also, like any major film festival, MOTELx offers the opportunity to preview movies before they enter major distribution (as was the case with Trick or Treat at the 2009 installment) and to meet horror luminaries. Each of MOTELx's annual programs has been organized around a retrospective of a particular horror director's work, who attends the festival for lectures and Q&A sessions. In 2010, this was the master of the zombie genre, George A. Romero. However, the festival was also attended by Neil Marshall, the director of Dog Soldiers and The Descent, who was there for a sneak preview of his Roman-era swords and sandals movie Centurion. Some horror fans come from as far away as neighboring Spain to attend MOTELx, as the next best opportunities to see such films and meet horror cinema personalities in a dedicated environment are found in the United Kingdom.

Of course, no film festival would be complete without a jury-selected award, and MOTELx is the only event recognizing stand-outs in Portuguese horror. A small country with a tiny, largely low-budget and indie-oriented film industry, Portugal nonetheless manages to produce enough horror films every year to merit at least a dozen entries for the MOTELx award.

The MOTELx experience itself is part of the allure, as the event is held in Lisbon's Cinema Sao Jorge, an imposing classic of the Art Deco era. For the festival, the interior is decorated with horror scenes such as heads on stakes for the sneak preview of Centurion, and the cinema itself with its cavernous-but-elegant chambers harks back to an era before the rise of the multiplex. Located on the mid-point of the city's leafy main boulevard of Avenida de Liberdade, the cinema is a short walk from a furnicular line that runs straight into the heart of the Lisbon's main nightlife district of Barrio Alto. Many patrons stroll from their downtown Lisbon places of work to catch films in the evening, while diehard horror fans cherry pick their films and spend the intervening time enjoying coffee in nearby cafes or jetting up to Barrio Alto or down to the nearby Rossio for a quick meal.

With its combination of a smart selection of horror films, its ability to draw horror cinema celebrities and its classy setting, MOTELx has proven quite a hit with both horror fans and cosmopolitan Lisbonites alike. Its success should ensure it a place in Lisbon's cultural firmament for years to come, and potentially draw in horror fans from around Europe.