THE CASE OF THE VANISHING GODS

a new feature film from the maker of NOTFILM

 

Vanishing

 

"THE CASE OF THE VANISHING GODS is in turn fun, funny,
deeply disturbing, and always provocative: a commentary on the
fakery of cinema and the desire for fakery that makes it all possible.
It's almost as acidic as it is terrifying."

- Jonathan Rosenbaum



A fable out of time told with artist-made puppets and archival film clips, The Case of the Vanishing Gods is a new kind of hybrid: half dream / half document. Under hypnosis, a tortured ventriloquist’s dummy recovers his lost memories, which relate a cultural history of ventriloquism from the prophetic tradition to the modern horror film. The entire tale is embedded in a frame paying homage to a vintage sci-fi TV series, while at the same time breaking down standard notions of film genre. Join this tragic hero on his strange journey into the hidden lives of puppets, and the collective unconscious that links them to our own lives.


A FICTION / DOC HYBRID EXPLORING THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS
OF OUR UNCONSCIOUS MINDS, AS SEEN IN CLIPS
FROM CLASSIC AND NOT-SO-CLASSIC WORKS OF CINEMA

 

WORLD PREMIERE AUGUST 2021:

Locarno



Featuring DAVID ISAACSON as Doctor Labyrinth

and JEFF DORCHEN (voice) and KARL HERLINGER (controls) as Hugo

Lead Puppeteer: AUDREY DENSMORE

Music by MIHALY VIG

Written, Photographed, Directed and Edited by ROSS LIPMAN

 

Best 10 Films of 2022 - Jonathan Rosenbaum, Screen Slate

Winner, Selezione Pixel (awarded by Corriere Del Ticino to the three most innovative films in the Locarno Film Festival 2021)

"What most distinguishes Lipman’s film is its body of bricolage and its soul of an earnest spiritual quest. The Case of the Vanishing Gods offers a deeply ambitious, compelling account of the infinite conflations and permutations of material, cinematic, and psychological territories. That it does so with humor and the utmost ingenuity, with an ethereal budget and a cool seventy-minute run time, makes it a beacon of scrappy existential glory." - Rachel Jones, The Brooklyn Rail

"a black phantasmagoria on the relationship between cinema and ventriloquism
in which puppet theater meets animation and Greek tragedy borders on horror....
The film enters a dimension between history, spirituality and the unconscious which, through a diversity of animation techniques, ventures to the very origins of ventriloquism." - Sylvia Nugara, Il Manifesto

"Ross Lipman, one of the most important contemporary independent cinema innovators, explores a fraction of film culture with surprising freedom, cutting, stretching and creating a unique collage of history, cinema, and ventriloquist art. There is no shortage of fear, and plenty of liberating laughter. The Case of the Vanishing Gods sets a clear direction for independent cinema, establishing the
increasingly important role of essay films beyond the mainstream cinema."
- Mateusz Tarwacki, Zawieszony

"Horror and psychoanalysis join in a beautiful, creative and damned disturbing work." - Alessio Gradogna, Orizzonti di Gloria

"a welcome experience that skillfully assembles, repurposes and recycles archival images to produce new sensations. Lipman confirms his talent as a film essayist, already displayed in NOTFILM and BETWEEN TWO CINEMAS. A great essay film."
- Monica Delgado, Desistfilm

"I thought I'd outgrown my fear of sentient dolls on a murderous rampage, but now I need to re-evaluate that belief. One thing's for sure, if I ever saw a doll coming at me and go under a bed/sofa, there is no way I'd bend down to look under it because that way only leads to pain."
- Cara-Lynn Branch, Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal

"Was that a movie by someone who's never seen a movie before?" - Anonymous viewer in lobby of Music Box Theater, Chicago

"One of the most original essay film artists now working in the U.S. I don't know another body of work even remotely similar to his." - Thom Andersen