Animated Short – In Development
Directed by Kier-La Janisse
Produced and adapted for the screen by Fritzi Adelman and Kier-La Janisse
Based on Julia Gfrörer’s acclaimed graphic novel (Fantagraphics 2020), Vision explores lust, grief, and the human need for connection in this story of a 19th century spinster and the haunted mirror that offers an escape from her frustrated life.
In Gfrörer’s thin, careworn lines, her debased and unnerving depictions of the supernatural, and her achingly vulnerable characters, she exposes the emotions that boil beneath the surface of everyday life and the terrible pressure society exerts to keep them hidden.
Kier-La Janisse’s autobiographical book of genre film theory, House of Psychotic Women (2012) occupies the same kind of liminal space as Vision’s haunted mirror – a candid look at female interiority, sexuality and the probing spectre of unresolved trauma. This will be the third film by Janisse as director; her first, the feature-length documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror is due out from Severin Films in 2021, and Wreckless (also forthcoming in 2021) is a partially animated short film chronicling the 33s and 45s that inspired indie rock iconoclast Wreckless Eric to become a musician.
Currently based in Los Angeles, Fritzi Adelman spent over a decade living in Montreal and Toronto where she studied art and cinema (BFA Art History / MA Film Studies) and worked professionally at leading fashion companies and film at festivals (Fantasia International Film Festival, Pop Montreal and TIFF). Making her way westward, she landed in the Bay Area, where she joined director Joe Talbot’s production company Longshot Features – the Sundance Award winning team that created A24 / Plan B’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco – and continues to work as one of Talbot’s closest collaborators. She is also set to produce Canadian director Noam Gonick’s Amber (set to go into production Spring, 2021) – a hybrid-documentary based on a true story of a double kidnapping which explores the Indigenous male experience, trauma and memory.