What is
?
Genre Gems is a five-day film festival that showcases the very best in genre cinema. Due to the recent financial success of Hollywood genre films such as Sinners, One Battle After Another, and Weapons, the festival aims to provide a counter-cultural slate of standout discoveries for fans of adventurous, boundary-pushing filmmaking. From horror films to science fiction, the carefully curated programme will spotlight hot festival titles from Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Fantasia, Locarno, and TIFF for their prestigious Ottawa premieres! The quality over quantity programming mythos prioritises films that defy and subvert genre tropes. We’re looking for strong artistic voices that aren’t afraid of provocation or self-censorship.
With the eclectic programming, the goal is to motivate audiences to engage with genre cinema. There is an avid genre community that routinely attends repertoire screenings at the Mayfair Theatre and Bytowne Cinema. We want to include and invite as many people from the community, and start discussions about the selection. Each film will have an official piece written and published by Genre Gems as a print-exclusive in our official programme book. The book will be sold throughout the five-day extravaganza at our box office. The pieces range from academic essays to candid interviews with film talent. The goal of the writing is to deconstruct, destigmatise, and promote bold storytelling within the context of genre cinema. We showcase films from both international and Canadian talent at the festival.
The goal with Genre Gems is to encourage positive debate about cinema. The selection and experience at the inaugural edition will be simultaneously entertaining and thought-provoking. Each screening will have an in-person introduction, where the programming team will provide context and introduce sponsors before the start of each feature presentation.
The first edition of Genre Gems took place at the Mayfair Theatre and Ciné Starz St. Laurent Centre
About The 2025 Poster Design
The inaugural poster design for the 1st edition of Genre Gems was designed by award-winning Canadian multi-media artist Winston Hacking.
With his design, Hacking’s poster embodies the whirlwind of genres on display at the festival. Including motifs from westerns, spy capers, murder mysteries, ghost stories, road movies, and horror films into his carefully curated design, the poster’s exuberant colour palette playfully pops out with its phantasmagoric face formation. The welcoming colours contrast with the intensity of the visual. The uncanny shape, formed out of pre-existing material, represents the curatorial ethos at Genre Gems. The diverse compilation symbolises the variety of films at the festival, luring audiences with its harmonious collage. The same techniques appear within the poster’s text-art. The font for ‘Genre Gems’ was carefully created one letter at a time, from cut-out images. The cosmic aesthetic is accessible to the eye, displaying an unabashedly maximalist genre-shifting tapestry with its economical iconography.
“I was enthusiastic to support David with his forthcoming Genre Gems festival. His fervent enthusiasm for avant-garde cinema is essential to introducing diverse world perspectives to Ottawa.”
About The 2025 Signal Film
“This marks an earlier-than-imagined return to filmmaking [along with a segment in Adam Thorn’s upcoming FARCES OF DEATH 2], told in a format closer to 2 minutes, rather than 2 hours 55 minutes. I grew up around comic book shops and VHS rental stores. I was never an expert on any comics title or genre of cinema, but being a part of these spaces was palpably formative to my geek passion. 1000000 Comix has, since my childhood, been and still is to this day my most cherished pop culture space, and I’m grateful that the store and its owners, Frank and Emilio, are still going decades later. I hope to give back with this signal film, showcasing this iconic local business, and help bring new customers and fans to 1000000 Comix.””
We’ve long admired Terry Chiu's underground filmography. After premiering his debut feature, Mangoshake, at the Vancouver International Film Festival, Chiu returned to do-it-yourself micro-budget filmmaking with his expansive three-hour opus Open Doom Crescendo. Since its release, the ambitious film has garnered a cult-audience at underground screenings and festivals around the globe.
The land on which the Genre Gems Film Festival takes place is the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg peoples. Since time immemorial, the Algonquin Anishinabeg peoples have stewarded the lands, waters, and rich cultural life of this region. As part of honouring this territory, we encourage Genre Gems attendees to seek out the work of Indigenous filmmakers, learn about the territories that we each occupy, and take action in support of Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty.