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The Retreat

1:00 PM

April 20, 2024

DIRECTOR:

Emmett Kerr-Perkinson

FILM TYPE:

Short

SYNOPSIS

A writer on a self imposed winter retreat finds himself in a series of increasingly bizarre encounters - from an unsettling hole in the ground to the omniscient cashier at a thrift store. As his world begins to fall apart, he must find a weapon within himself to defeat the shadowy forces controlling his fate.


DIRECTOR BIO

Emmett Kerr-Perkinson is a Brooklyn based filmmaker, originally from Houston, Texas. After spending most of his 20's gaffing indie features in Austin and dreaming of making his own films, he co-founded Pan Up Productions and moved to NYC in 2016. His recent notable crew work has been as a camera operator on Theater Camp (Sundance, 2023) and additional cinematographer on Ren Faire (SXSW, 2024). As a director and producer, Emmett brings to bear hard won technical knowledge from his years spent in the independent and union crew scenes. His spec commercial for Tinder, “Our Story”, was selected for SHOOT’s New Director Showcase in 2019. Determined to make the leap to creating his own narrative work, he began writing screenplays in 2021 and directed The Retreat, his first short film, in 2023.


DIRECTOR STATEMENT

I wrote this self-referential film on my own writing retreat in the same cabin we shot it in. It started as a joke - just get the dumb writer-in-cabin idea out of the way. But as the script pushed further and further into absurdity, I ended up liking it. I'd spent a decade and a half working on other people's films, and a lot of that is present here. To me this film is about the struggle to say something meaningful, and how my dream project might just be your shitty day.

Year:

2023

Runtime:

8:18

Language:

Country:

US

Premiere:

Pennsylvania

Director:

Emmett Kerr-Perkinson

Executive Producer:

Producer:

Robert Ravenscroft

Writer:

Emmett Kerr-Perkinson

Cinematographer:

Editor:

Cast:

Sean Gradwell, Christine Renee Miller, Jesse Ruuttila

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