Private Project

A MOONLESS NIGHT

The cinematic reimagining of Netherlands and Mexico-based music and art collective Snowapple’s surrealist cabaret: MR. MOON, A MOONLESS NIGHT combines puppetry, mime, and international styles of music to tell the story of the moon’s fall from the night sky.

The strange patrons of a bar become even stranger when the moon falls from the night sky. Confusion reigns; a business mogul’s pedantry clashes with a diva’s hypnotic lyrics, the bartender’s smile grows suspicious, and the bus boy spills every drink he touches. And all the while the moon herself wanders the unfamiliar earth, her search for balance pulling on the tide of human emotions that awaits her in the bar.

  • Eva Schumacher
    Director
  • Nora Tinholt
    Director
  • Laurien Schreuder
    Director
  • Eva Schumacher
    Writer
  • Talia Shea Levin
    Producer
  • Shadi Chaaban
    Cinematographer
  • Sharon Toribio
    Editor
  • Mauro Babún
    Editor
  • Federico Quintana Osuna
    Editor
  • Dylan Connor Haigh
    Editor
  • Nora Tinholt
    Production Design
  • Mo Benchellal
    Costume Design
  • Marelva de Bruin
    Hair & Makeup Design
  • Thai Long Ly, C.A.S.
    Sound Design / Re-Recording Mixer
  • Nora Tinholt
    Key Cast
  • Laurien Schreuder
    Key Cast
  • Ilija Surla
    Key Cast
  • Janneke Remmers
    Key Cast
  • Ana Karina Lombardi
    Key Cast
  • Josse Vessies
    Key Cast
  • Osito Moro von Ropi
    Key Cast
  • Alan 'Gunga' Purves
    Key Cast
  • Suwanne Jo
    Key Cast
  • Arthur Herman
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Feature
  • Genres:
    Cabaret, Surrealism, Music
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 1 minute
  • Country of Origin:
    Netherlands
  • Country of Filming:
    Mexico, Netherlands
  • Language:
    English, Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Eva Schumacher, Nora Tinholt, Laurien Schreuder

Art has many shapes; it is always changing and mutating.

NORA TINHOLT studied fine art at de Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and physical theater at Lecoq, she worked as an assistant with the Phillippe Genty company and developed several interdisciplinary performances. She has developed her unique perspective on creation through her travels, from Japan to the circus tent of South Africa. She played internationally with the Duda Paiva company but also created and designed puppets herself.

Art is a defender of the basic and necessary values of human life.

EVA SCHUMACHER studied philosophy in France and movement theater in Brussels. She wrote and directed plays with her company the TSQP, in collaboration with various international artists (dancers, musicians and actors). She developed inclusive artistic projects with social centers, creating shows with actors with mental disabilities and believes in unique artistic forms in accordance with the individuality of the creators and participants.

Art is everywhere and has no other rules than the ones we want to give it.

LAURIEN SCHREUDER has a masters degree in physics from the University of Amsterdam. And had an extensive, as well as anarchistic, career as an opera singer/performing-artist/musician performing at Glastonbury Festival, Eurosonic, Vive Latino, Paradiso and many more. Her music has been released worldwide (V2 Records, ZIP Records, Debt Records) and been played at several TV and Radio stations.

Art is play, commitment and pleasure.

The Snowapple collective believes in art that is:

MULTIPLE. We are a collective of artists from different backgrounds and we bring together our practices, knowledge and traditions to create joyful and multidisciplinary projects.

EXPERIMENTAL. We are interested in finding a daring form of art, one that sits outside the box.

CONTEMPORARY. We are constantly on a search for the new, the unknown and the “not yet experienced”. We believe that art should always be moving and always seeking to evolve.

UNIVERSAL. We are convinced that everyone must have access to art, irrespective of their age, culture or origin, and without fear of prejudice.

CONNECTED. We believe that our collective is characterized by its desire to meet, share and constantly learn from others.

INTERNATIONAL. We are currently based in Mexico, France and The Netherlands, and we work with collaborators from Scotland, Lebanon, the United States of America and Italy.

SOCIAL. We are committed to fighting for art that is rooted in reality and society, for: an art form that engages with current social issues and brings with it questions and debates.

Together, Eva, Nora, and Laurien form the creative core of the SNOWAPPLE COLLECTIVE, a multidisciplinary international ensemble. In the past three years they created different projects combining mime, theater, poetry, music, visual art and film : MR. MOON, a surrealist cabaret (www.mooncabaret.com), PROJECT LUCY a theater show about women throughout time (www.projectlucy.nl), and the interdisciplinary performance LA LLORONA - SER MUJER, with which they raised awareness for the femicides happening in Mexico. Those creations have toured all around the world and played at several radio stations, TV stations and festivals (Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Festival OFF d’Avignon…). By engaging in a dynamic of inclusion and pedagogy, Snowapple also seeks to interrogate the modes of creation and production and offers a safe space to people from different backgrounds and trajectories.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

The film begins with an unreal event with tragic consequences: the moon falls from the sky, embodied by a young woman. From this event is born the imbalance between light and shadow, between hope and distress.
Two journeys take place simultaneously: a young woman, the moon, disoriented, in search of meaning, walking through landscapes deserted by man, and a bar where the mental equilibrium of the characters seems to have shifted. Caught up in their madness, their fears, their inclinations, they have sunk into a world without light.
The closer the moon gets to them, the more their island, their closed universe, almost collapses, until the unknown overwhelms the bar and its regulars.

Our film moves fluidly between forms: poetry, to macroscopic images of materials, to fantastic landscapes, to songs and ecstatic play. The barrier between the normal and the abnormal is blurred.

With the aesthetics of surrealism and operatic melodrama, we play with disciplines, chronologies, images, and sounds. In the manner of a total theater, this film is at the intersection of many different materials and practices. Our approach uses the techniques of both fictional and experimental narrative. to create a form that takes the viewer into a dream state and the world of the unconscious wheresymbols, strong images and interwoven narratives create a sensation of vertigo, and the humor is as black as the moonless night.

The disappearance of the moon is an impetus to highlight the world at night: its darkness, its capacity to reveal the worst parts of ourselves, but also its beauty, its creativity, its poetry. In the night we dream, we tremble, we love. But what happens if the moon, the only guide at night, falls from the sky?

Our ambition was to create a dystopian universe, a magnified, embellished, ugly version of our world, as through the prism of a dream or a kaleidoscope. In this world where everything is pushed to the extreme, where the slightest emotion is heightened, we wanted to speak in the manner of fairy tales, of the archetypes and myths that shape our own and adjacent worlds. The characters are subjected to a dominant emotion: dissociation, the feeling of not being able to coordinate one's head and body, vanity at its extreme, separation from the physical self. Through the symbolic universe of A MOONLESS NIGHT we continue to explore the themes that drive other Snowapple projects: alternate realities, not always as distant from our own as we might think, s, subconscious realms that allow us to see the joys and fears of our conscious lives more clearly.