FILM WORK

From 2005-2010 Janisse made a series of unofficial music documentaries, referred to by video artist Hope Peterson as “bibliodocs,” as they featured exclusively pre-existing footage with contextual intertitles or voiceover narration. These included Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth! (2005) based on the book by Kim Cooper and David Smay, My Autumn’s Done Come: The Lee Hazlewood Story (2006, narrated by Boyd Rice – for which Lee Hazlewood personally threatened Janisse with a lawsuit), Teen Routines: The Self-Made Magic of R. Stevie Moore (2010) and more.

Janisse was a producer on Mike Malloy’s feature documentary Eurocrime: the Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s (2012), Sean Hogan’s short horror films We Always Find Ourselves in the Sea (2017) and To Fire You Come at Last (2022), Mike McKinlay’s short documentary Tights Worship: The Processes of The Rita (2019) and David Gregory’s Tales of the Uncanny (2021), about the history of the portmanteau horror film.

In 2017 she began working with Severin Films as an editor and producer for their special features. This collaboration led to Janisse’s first feature as director/producer, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, which went on to premiere at SXSW where it won the Midnighters Audience Award, in addition to winning a Fangoria Chainsaw Award and many other accolades. She is currently working on her second documentary feature for Severin Films, an adaptation of David Kerekes and David Slater’s groundbreaking 1994 book Killing for Culture.

In 2019 Janisse participated in the restoration and re-release of Harry Nilsson’s 1971 animated TV movie The Point, offering the use of her personal 16mm film print and contributing to several of the bonus features for the 2020 MVD blu ray release as a producer and editor.

In 2020/2021 Janisse embarked on three collaborations as a writer with photographer Nick Knight, creating the fashion films S.W.A.L.K. and S.W.A.L.K. II for designer John Galliano and Maison Margiela for their 2020 Artisinal and Ready-to-Wear collections, and A Folk Horror Tale for the 2021 Artisinal.