Short Film: The Hunter and the Swan Discuss Their Meeting

The Sundance Film Festival is over for another year. One of the official selections featured at the festival was The Hunter and the Swan Discuss Their Meeting, a short film by Emily Carmichael that draws inspiration from The Swan Maiden body of folklore.

The short is available for viewing in its entirety through Sundance on YouTube and I am embedding it below. Do be aware that it has nudity that is blurred out. The short description is:

A Brooklyn couple have dinner with a hunter and his girlfriend, a magical swan woman. It doesn't go well.

From Q&A w/ Sundance filmmaker Emily Carmichael “The Hunter and the Swan…”written by Jason Sondhi:

What kind of statement were you going for with the contrast between the two couples?

Well it’s definitely that the couple with the more magical origin story has the less stable relationship. Also that the Hunter and Swan are a very gender-classic couple, but the Other Couple is a little switched in that the guy is a little more gentle and sentimental than the girl. I’ve always known lots of very sensitive men and very outspoken women, so to me they feel like a very familiar pair.


Walk us through the development process of the story and the production.

I wrote some of the film when I was back at my parents apartment looking at this old Time Life book of “Fairies and Elves” that I had. I showed it to a few people, including Josh (Kid Can Drive Producer Josh Hetzler) who really wanted me to finish it so we could make the movie. I write a lot of little fragments of things that lie around in various ways, so it was good to have someone there saying “THAT one.” Most of the crew are longtime collaborators of Josh’s, he has a little team/family/biker gang that go with him from project to project. Cara Francis played a big role in helping cast–Elizabeth Stewart, Lauren Sharpe and Brendan Donaldson are all friends of hers. Ryan Link just responded to an ad and came in to read.

There's a lot more in the article so click through to read more if you are interested. You can also visit the official film site. For now, here is the film: