Summer, 2017
Julie Orlick and the cast of Silent Lovers toured across the U.S. a retrospective of Orlick's entire collection of avant-garde short 16mm films from 2014-2017 (11 shorts), with the premiere of her newest film, Silent Lovers (color 16mm, running time 10min) starring Elisabeth O'Driscoll, Nathan Graves, Alex Tatarsky and Lily Chambers. Musical score by Nathan Graves. Assistant Director Fernando Velez.
*Film can only be viewed at select screenings, live 16mm projection*
Available for film distribution.
"As if trapped in a warbly snow globe at the bottom of an ocean (probably not far off Coney Island), we peer into a crystalized void where ageless and speechless souls of elegant despair longingly linger. Obedient to the sovereign ruler of his silent universe, a hopeless mime plays lap dog to a covetous queen in their silky echo chamber of imprisonment. As revelations befall upon the crestfallen clown, he realizes his dis-enthrallment through a shattering escape with the hand of a pirouetting harlequin, while Her Majesty’s empire and identity spiral into vibrant agony. Caught in a fantasy of abstract and eternal heartache, their faces are forever enslaved to express, or mask, what they cannot say."
"Filmed in a dingy Brooklyn basement, as well as one of our own beloved d.i.y. venues, Julie Orlick and her team of unsung romantic weirdos bring to Spectacle her latest and most enterprising short film, Silent Lovers, within a retrospective of Orlick’s works all shot in New York, and on glorious and grainy 16mm. An encounter with her films feels something like slipping out to the speakeasy and tending to a surreal bender with Kenneth Anger. Come indulge in a lavish feast of cake and cruelty, mermaids washed ashore, lecherous gazes, ladies lost in double exposure, murder and sugar cubes, and endless flowers all hot off the reel."
-Otis Mahach of Spectacle Theater & Molasses Books
These are the original tintypes that inspired the film. After "The Two Mimes" tintype portrait was taken of Nathan Graves in the Summer of 2016, it seems as though we all collectively grew an obsession with mimes. Soon after, Elisabeth O'Driscoll came to me with the photographic idea of having nipple hearts and being a mime queen and the rest is history.