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Nightingale in a Music Box
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Directed by Hurt McDermott Written by Hurt McDermott Produced by Leigh Jones Todd Slotten Genre Runtime: 96 min Release Date: November 2007 Filmmaker's Website Send to Friends |
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Plot Outline
Imagine a technology which has the potential to change what it means to be human.
New Garden Technologies has just patented a new life form, microbes made to be inserted in the brain to control memory. The nations of the world want this technology controlled; so when New Garden apprehends someone trying to steal these genetic blue prints, the UN is quick to send Burke, a legendary female operative who has been debriefing tainted spies since the Cold War. But Robin McAlister is not your typical thief; she is a Chicago real estate agent and mother of two. So how could she possibly be involved in this crime? Unfortunately, this question may take some time to answer, because Robin claims not to even remember who she is. Burke must pick her way through Robin’s mind, figuring out what is real and what has been manufactured. Burke realizes the stakes are high: How easily can our minds be taken away from us? How quickly can our identity be changed? Do we even have a self to lose? Agent Burke is about to find out.
Awards
Screenwriting Excellence, 2005 Brooklyn International Film Festival
Winner of Jury Award Excellence in Screen Writing, 2004 Slamdance Film Festival
Best Director, 2005 Shriekfest International Festival of Horror & Science Fiction
Reviews Nightingale is terrific. It's a taut little mousetrap of a thriller, with more than a nod to the clever plotting of Hitchcock. It rockets along, one step ahead of the viewer, and creates a tense, edgy mood with a minimum of fuss or special effects. Nightingale in a Music Box is a taut brainwashing thriller in which a federal agent sifts through an amnesiac's fragmented memories ... has its screws tightened--director Hurt McDermott is aware of his limitations and is more than capable of thriving within them. George Orwell might have had this film in his DVD library had such a thing existed in his time. Films like "Nightingale" demonstrate that independent thrillers do not need stunts and computer generated action sequences to be thrilling and entertaining. "Nightingale in a Music Box" is a talk-heavy but crisp and tantalizing mind-game involving a woman who finds herself the victim of a top-secret memory-eating bacterium.
C. W. Nevius, San Francisco Chronicle > read full review
Ben Kenigsberg, Village Voice > read full review
Jonathan Hickman, www.einsiders.com > read full review
Joshua Tanzer, Offoffoff.com > read full review
Filmmaker Notes
Nightingale in a Music Box concerns the unleashing of a technology that changes what it means to be human. Still the truth is that we have already adopted and adapted to numerous technologies which change what it means to be human without giving them a second thought. In Pnin, Nabokov’s narrator writes, “The cranium is a space-traveller’s helmet. Stay inside or you perish.” But now we’ve reached the point where it’s relatively easy to get inside the helmet, the brain, and getting easier all the time. So far, we’ve refused to ask, “Is there any place left for the individual conscience, the individual soul, the individual at all in such a brave new world that has such access to the brain in it?”
Nightingale in a Music Box asks the question in the form of a taut thriller.
Castlist
Kelley Hazen - Burke
Andrzej Krukowski - Sowa
Catherine O'Connor - Robin
Pamela Webster - Wilson
Taylor Grove - Florence
Jillian Dirks - Charlotte
Trish Niemeck - Hoover
Jane Blass - Genevieve
Deron Gram - Ridley
SERENA MOY - Chinese Agent
Music
Robert Fripp
Brian Eno
Sound
Todd Slotten
Cinematographers
Michael Dunne
Film Editors
Hurt McDermott
Set Decoration
Merje Veski
Crewlist
Mark Berger - Rerecording Mixer
Chris Boscardin - Supervising Editor
Dave Martin - Music Supervisor
Screenings
Sci-Fi London International Film Festival, 2005
Brooklyn International Film Festival, 2005
Athens International Film Festival, 2004
Silver Lake Film Festival, 2004
Mill Valley Film Festival, 2003