Location | Morzine-Avoriaz, Haute-Savoie, France |
---|---|
Started | 1973 |
Founded by | Gérard Brémond, Lionel Chouchan |
Most recent | 1993 |
Successor | Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival Avoriaz French Film Festival |
Artistic director | Jean-Claude Romer[1] |
Festival date | January |
Language | International |
The Avoriaz International Fantastic Film Festival (French: Festival international du film fantastique d'Avoriaz) was a film festival held in the French resort of Avoriaz between 1973 and 1993.[2] It was the precursor to the current Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival.
Unlike many such events, the Avoriaz festival did not have grassroots origins. Organized as a vehicle for the eponymous skiing resort, it intended to promote the genre and its host town to a mainstream audience, with a level of glamour typically associated with more accepted film genres.
The New York Times called it "a great success, the high point of many junketing French journalists' winters"[3] and the Financial Times wrote that its two decades of existence had turned Avoriaz into "a momentary movie mecca".[4] In its time, the festival was hailed as the premier fantasy film event in the world,[5][6][7] although recent assessments have ranked Sitges, which outlasted it by a considerable margin, as the genre's foremost gathering.[8]
[...] Avoriaz Film Festival, considered the world's most prestigious festival for fantasy films.