Anna Biller Filmmaker and Author

Anna Biller: The Short Film Collection





Still from THE INCUBUS

A VISIT FROM THE INCUBUS


16mm, color, 27 mins.


Lucy, (Anna Biller) a young Victorian woman in the Old West, is being tormented by nightly visits from an incubus (a horrible demon who has sexual intercourse with sleeping women). Her friend Madeleine (Natalia Schroeder) tries to console her, but is unable to help. A fallen woman, Lucy gets a job singing at the local saloon. However, the Incubus (Jared Sanford) has followed her there; and things take an unexpected turn as Lucy and the Incubus, amidst the rowdy cowboys and saucy can-can girls, have their final showdown. With beautiful period costumes and sets by director Anna Biller that are borrowed from 1950's Technicolor films, plus big hairdos, weird musical numbers, and plenty of great character actors, this Horror-Western-Musical has all of the elements of a cult classic.

Brilliantly directed, written and acted, the biggest star of this film is once again, Biller's impeccable talent for set and costume design. You just can’t help but get sucked into the Technicolor world that she knows so well. Truly astonishing. -Eric Campos, Film Threat




Garth Petal and Ariana Grace in THE HYPNOTIST

THE HYPNOTIST


16mm, color, 45 mins.


As their elderly father lies dying, his children, Beatrice (Ariana Grace), William (Jared Sanford) and Charles (Nicholas Gilhool), can barely contain their contempt for one another. So, when the old man stipulates that in order for them to inherit any money they must live together under one roof, the scheming and backbiting start almost immediately. In The Hypnotist, writer-producer Jared Sanford and director Anna Biller have crafted an old-fashioned melodrama (think The Little Foxes with the camp turned even higher) that, set in the 1930's of classic Hollywood movies, brilliantly captures era details in its costumes, set design, even the crisp enunciation that stars once used to convey wealth and good breeding. With Beatrice vamping and cracking wise, Charles mincing about like a fledgling queen and the black-clad William all but sweating his spiritual angst, The Hypnotist is a riot.-LA Weekly




The Queen Bee

THREE EXAMPLES OF MYSELF AS QUEEN


16mm, color, 26 mins.


A hilarious romp that turns topsy-turvy the old Hollywood standards of female sexuality and pleasure, Three Examples of Myself... brings together three fantasies of how women would run things if they were on the throne of power. Remixing fluffy musical numbers with a definite feminist twist, director Biller creates a rebellious coquette for the 90's--a kind of Sandra Dee meets Madonna--as she rules a harem in the Arabian Nights, rules over a hiveful of submissive drones, and even finds sexual liberation in the disco era. With a scoreful of delightful musical fantasies, the film delivers a magical twist to the notions of visual pleasure.-New York Asian American Film Festival


An endearing camp travesty musical. Sweet, funny, with marvelous costumes, sets, and even quilts designed and constructed by Biller, a kind of innocent homage to Maria Montez with color and decor worthy of Kenneth Anger. -Kevin Thomas, LOS ANGELES TIMES





Still from FAIRY BALLET

FAIRY BALLET


35mm, color, 11 mins.


This short film is adapted from Madame d'Aulnoy's clasic fairy tale, The White Cat. The White Cat was originally planned as a feature film musical which Anna Biller worked on over a period of a couple of years, creating an original soundtrack, over a hundred costumes, many props, and a children's book. Eventually, realizing it was a bit unconventional and expensive to raise the proper funding for, she instead adapted it for the stage with a cast of eight performers, and called the new version The Lady Cat. This play was staged at a few underground theaters in Los Angeles, and later Fairy Ballet, a scene from the film, was filmed as a test for the motion picture. The White Cat was an ambitious project, in the style of symbolist-decadent poetry and plays, adding in influences from the American music hall and vaudeville.




Still from THE LADY CAT

THE LADY CAT


Musical Extravaganza, 70 mins.

"Devils, clowns, showgirls, drag acts, and 'pouty French girls' are just some of the delights in store for you in The Lady Cat, an hour long 'musical extravaganza' written, scored, designed, and choreographed by Anna Biller. Biller, who also stars, garnered raves for her 1994 film Three Examples of Myself as Queen; The Lady Cat... features eight performers in a distinctly non-Andrew Lloyd Weber examination of 'dignity in feminine glamour.'" -Dan Epstein, L.A. Reader

"Wonderfully mad, a window into the sweetly idiosyncratic world of its creator. Biller plays the titular feline, a strange werecat who lives in a castle and whom like her attendants wears late-19th-century dresses and speaks in the stilted cadences of a long-ago romanticism. The show's numbers about picnics, springtime and shopping mostly emulate Victorian music hall tunes, although they occasionally (and this is part of The Lady Cat's nutty charm) swing inconsistently into other genres. On opening night, [there were] technical problems, but the show is so different from anything you've seen that in the end none of this matters." -Steven Mikulan, L.A. Weekly


Listen to a song from this show!