The Fire Sermon (2023) - Short Film
Written and directed by Robert Dee.
Hiding from home and an abusive mother troubled Henry befriends a stranger in the woods who offers him a special gift that comes with a price.
Director Statement
The Fire Sermon is a self contained proof of concept short for the feature film Genesis I am developing. Whilst working with biblical themes as a mythological template I undertook extensive research into the stranger danger tropes in cinema, tv and culture at large. A lot of this research formed the basis of a public lecture I gave for the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies and excepts can be found in my blog, The Aberrant Reader (see top menu). In addition to stranger danger tropes I also incorporated psychoanalytic ideas from Freud and Lacan, particularly on the good/bad mother, the ‘obscene’ nature of the Superego, and how language both forms identity and corrupts us.
The Fire Sermon will be entered into festivals in Summer 2023 and will form part of a package to raise funds for the feature Genesis which will be in production in 2024.
