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

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

"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