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Night Hunter
2011 | 16:00 | 35mm to HD | Color
Multiple prize winner, screened at more than 40 festivals worldwide
In this meticulously crafted film, the actress Lillian Gish is scrupulously lifted from silent-era cinema and plunged into a new, haunting role. Night Hunter summons a disquieting dreamscape drawn from allegory, myth, and archetype to create an evocation of the uncanny and a reflection on the creative process. Music and sound by Larry Polansky.
“Night Hunter is amazing, brilliant. A true horror movie of absolute essence, evoking the darkest of fairy tales and dream worlds from the deepest and most disquieting recesses of the mind-body experience. Very disturbing in its haunting beauty and fluid, evocative (nothing so static as ‘symbolic’ would imply) imagery, tensions, paradoxes—all the way through to the final ‘escape’ (into the dark forest); Lillian Gish is archetypically mesmerizing. In fact, it all seems quite perfect—the rich and complex collages, the developing rhythms, the sound. A great work. Beyond words—of course.” —Marilyn Brakhage
Production notes
2011 | 16:00 | 35mm | Color
In the second film of the trilogy, actress Lillian Gish is seamlessly appropriated from silent-era cinema and cast into a mysterious, powerful role.
Images from four silent-era films featuring Gish are combined with fragments of 18th and 19th century illustrations to create complex, timeless images for the more than 4,500 collages. Transitions, both biological and metaphorical, are central themes. In some instances, Gish is cut out of specific scenes and reconfigured in collage environments, while in others, collage materials are applied directly to printed film frames. The subsequent fluidity of the character becomes a critical element in the texture of the film. Night Hunter was shot on an Oxberry animation stand using a Mitchell 35mm camera. There are approximately eight distinct, handmade collages for each second of screen time. The film took over four years to complete.
Music and sound were added in post-production by Larry Polansky.