TRIBUTES
Our Hall of Fame for members of the Buffalo film community who were important to our festival, to our community, and to our team, who brightened our lives. It's crazy that all three of these titans left us within a four-year span. They worked together many times, and if an afterlife exists, they're probably bickering with each other there right now. To know them was to love them, and if you didn't know them it was your loss. May their light shine on!
Michael O'Hear and Bill Brown, captured at a moment when Bill was angry at Michael.
Bill Brown and Aceifer Genovese, with Joe Reboy, behind the scenes of Ace's THE OUTLAW: THE LIVING COMIC BOOK
1963- 2020
Michael O'Hear, lovingly nicknamed "Buffalo's Donald Pleasance," was an actor and filmmaker who was in on the ground floor of Buffalo's film renaissance. He was a gentle man who acted on stage and in many, many, MANY Buffalo films, shorts and features alike. He joined our team with the first incarnation of our festival, Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival, and helped out whenever he could in the years that followed, even when dealing with health issues. Some of his most memorable roles were in SLIME CITY MASSACRE, DRY BONES, SNOW SHARK: ANCIENT SNOW BEAST and KILLER RACK. His favorite actor was Peter Cushing, his favorite director to work with was Debbie Rochon, and his favorite thing to do was act. Each year our Michael O'Hear Award celebrates what we feel is the best Western New York film that we screen.
1943 - 2022
Bill Brown, lovingly known as "the Great Bill Brown," was one of a kind: a retired steelworker and widower with a heavy Scottish accent who got into theatre acting as a way to meet people. Roles in THE LEGEND OF SIX FINGERS, KILLER RACK, JOHNNY GRUESOME and WIDOW'S POINT followed, and before we knew it he was in every other short film produced in Buffalo. He acted in films by Fred Olen Ray, Gregory Lamberson, Aceifer Genovese and many others. He was ornery and lovable, obstinate and joyful. As a volunteer for Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival he met visiting filmmakers from all over the world, and they adored him and remembered him. Nothing on earth was funnier than seeing Bill portay the assassin in Aceifer's OUTLAW series, a character created after the assassin's identical twin brother priest was murdered! Bill loved to be around people and we can think of no better way to honor inividuals in the Western New York acting community than to present them with our Bill Brown Award.
1968 - 2024
Ace, lovingly known as "Six," was a heavy metal musician who became a screenwriter, director, producer, star and provocateur. He was the living embodiment of the word "rebel." His nine films in THE OUTLAW: THE LIVING COMIC BOOK series were outrageous, hilarious and thoroughly entertaining spectacles of DIY filmmaking that delighted attendees of Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival and Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival, whether they knew what the hell they were watching or not. It is one of the great tragedies of the universe that because he failed to properly copyright these epic, mythological, fetishistic, metalistic films a Chinese company stole them and most of them are unavailable. Ace, we salute you, and ever year we present the Outlaw Cinema Award in your memory.
