Scott Barber’s This Is GWAR documentary took top Audience Award honors for features at NIGHTSTREAM 2021, which ran from October 7-13th virtually all across the U.S.

“This film was an absolute honor to be a part of,” says Barber on the Audience Award, “now, on top of that, to win this award at a festival like NIGHTSTREAM is just amazing. I got to work with an incredibly talented team on this film, and we are all so very grateful to everyone who watched it at the festival! Thank you so much! Hail GWAR!”

GWAR lead vocalist Berserker Blóthar also shared his thanks for the win, adding “I’ve got a night stream for ya. I’m working with a prostate the size of a Hyundai Elantra. But seriously, we are honored to have the audience award. Screw the critics. It’s the people that matter. That’s why we do what we do. After all, they’re the ones with the money and the drugs.”

Runner-up features for the Audience Award are Kier-La Janisse’s doc, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror and Junta Yamaguchi’s Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes.

The short film Audience Award was a tie between Joe Cappa’s Ghost Dogs and Chris McInroy’s Guts.

“Ghost Dogs was a very long passion project. It was my first animated short and I had no idea if the thing was going to make sense, or if anyone would get what I was trying to do. It’s nice to know there are other perverts out there just like me who see the value in a group of humanoid dogs masturbating,” says Cappa on the accolade for Ghost Dogs.

“The NIGHTSTREAM audience is my kind of audience. Thank you so much to the festival for playing it. A bonus of a streaming festival is when you watch something like Guts you’re probably pretty close to a bathroom if you need to hurl,” says McInroy on the split win for Guts

The runner-up Audience Award in the shorts category went to Sonny Calvento’s Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss.

NIGHTSTREAM 2021 AUDIENCE AWARDS

AUDIENCE AWARD – FEATURE: This is GWAR, dir. Scott Barber

AUDIENCE AWARD RUNNER-UP – FEATURE: Woodlands Darks and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, dir. Kier-La Janisse

AUDIENCE AWARD RUNNER-UP – FEATURE: Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes, dir. Junta Yamaguchi

AUDIENCE AWARD – SHORT: Ghost Dogs, dir. Joe Cappa

AUDIENCE AWARD – SHORT: Guts, dir. Chris McInroy

AUDIENCE AWARD RUNNER-UP – SHORT: Excuse Me, Miss, Miss, Miss, dir. Sonny Calvento