Boston Underground Film Festival 2009

It is a dark and stormy night. Through the wind and the rain, a soft light burns in a castle tower. It is the home of the dreaded sorceress Golgotha, whom time and tribulation have reduced to a sickly shadow of her former glory. In her final hours, Golgotha is attended by the last of her loyal servants, a goblin named Minion, to whom she recounts the days before she became a power-hungry sorceress. Her woeful tale reveals an obsession with a certain wooden-handled sword and — possibly, buried deep beneath her icy facade — a desire for love. Will she be willing to admit the truth before she takes her last breath?

This black and white homage to supernatural classics of German Expressionism like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, tells the story of Golgotha’s tragic childhood, coming of age, rebellion, and rise to power through silent flashbacks with intertitles. A series of both comic and tragic vignettes introduces the colorful characters of the lonely sorceress’ past, including King MacGuffin, a cruel tyrant who taxes his subjects to death, Prince Debonere, an Crusader who battles a dragon but isn’t quite prepared to wear his father’s crooked crown, and Fritz, sidekick and best friend of the Prince, who has a particularly strong affection for the ladies. The combination of silent-era stylized acting techniques in the flashbacks, with the modern film language of the “real-time” castle sequences, makes this a truly unique experiment in narrative filmmaking.