Beyond Time

The Environmental Legacy of Underground Filmmaker Geoffrey de Valois

For over fifty years, Geoffrey de Valois has combined underground cinema with ecological activism. His films confront nuclear danger, climate collapse, and technological disruption, always through women who lead, resist, and survive. They are not background figures — they are the ones who act.

1972 — Decommissioning Nuclear Power
De Valois began with activism, documenting the dangers of nuclear energy with Ralph Nader and Public Television at a moment when public awareness was still emerging. This set the foundation for his lifelong concern with ecological survival.

Before directing features, de Valois worked on some of the biggest studio films of the 1980s, including the Halloween, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Indiana Jones franchises. He also directed more than 400 commercials, an experience that honed his ability to combine precise filming with a focus on characters.

1982–1994 — Academic Career
Alongside his filmmaking, de Valois taught film and television production at Cal Poly Humboldt, San Francisco State, San Jose State, College of the Redwoods, Mills College, and Cal State Los Angeles.

1982 — Love Has the Right to Choose
Created with Mara Goldberg and Public Television, this film was inspired by the art of Emma B. Freeman in 1915. Respect for Native peoples and traditions shaped a story of independence and female guardianship of the earth. The film’s style set a tone of independence and strong female roles that carried forward into much of his later work.

1986–1991 — Computer Animation Magic, Computer Dreams, Computer Visions
With Computer Animation Magic (created with Donna Cohen and Steve Michelson), followed by Computer Dreams and Computer Visions, de Valois helped chart the rise of CGI in the 1980s and 1990s. These documentaries celebrated digital art while raising questions about technology’s effect on culture and nature. Women appeared as hosts and narrators — a rare presence in tech media of the time.

1988–1994 — Network and Studio VFX
De Valois produced and directed six computer animation sequences for Columbia Pictures’ NBC sci-fi miniseries *Something Is Out There*. He produced the titles and animation for the David Lynch/Mark Frost FOX network series *American Chronicles* and created animation for the FOX network special *Coca-Cola Pop Music Backstage Pass to Summer with Cher*. He also produced the “Roy Sands – Stunt Scientist” character for FOX. Expanding into music and live performance, De Valois produced the graphics and animation for Propaganda Films’ popular *John Lithgow’s Kid Sized Concert*. For Paramount Pictures, De Valois produced the morph creature animations in *Seed People*.

1992 — Sorority House Vampires
In the comedy Sorority House Vampires, the main vampire knows her feeding leaves behind environmental disasters but refuses to stop. Buffy confronts and defeats her. The film ends with a stylized dance that both sends up exploitation cinema and points toward personal and environmental recovery. Its mix of parody, nudity, and gore turns old exploitation ideas into a critique.

1995 — The Vampire Conspiracy
By contrast, The Vampire Conspiracy is a dark comedy in which the heroine burns her male vampire oppressor alive and walks away free, unbound, and in control of her future. Here, the nudity and gore are meant to be confrontational, driving home the story’s moral turning point.
Both Sorority House Vampires and The Vampire Conspiracy pushed against the limits of underground filmmaking — provocative, female-centered horror-comedies made with speed, resourcefulness, and a refusal to play by the rules.

2019 — The Girl from Provence (Secret in Provence)
Made with French writer, actor, and singer Chloé Domange, this haunting mystery ties personal trauma to environmental memory. Filmed partly in French in Provence, it begins with a childhood trauma and follows a woman uncovering a long-hidden secret. The result is both haunting and redemptive.

2023 — Climate Strike
An AI-driven short reflecting the urgency of youth movements. Its female lead demands change in a collapsing world, echoing real protest voices calling for ecological justice.

2024 — Eve and The End of Civilization
Two shorts about climate-driven threats: one where technology both endangers and empowers, another where collapse strips society to its core. In both, women lead the struggle to endure.

2025 — Beyond Time
Starring Chloé Domange, this hybrid live action AI film is set in post-nuclear San Francisco. It asks what it means to survive after the world is gone. The heroine must decide not just her own fate, but humanity’s path forward.

Legacy
Geoffrey de Valois’s work is an environmental record written in underground cinema. From nuclear power to climate collapse, his films insist that survival belongs to women who take control — strategists, leaders, and visionaries who transform disaster into agency.