Voodoun Blues - Misty Mundae Shorts ( DVD)
VOODOUN BLUES DVD
featuring VOODOUN BLUES (Directed by Misty Mundae) and two additional short films presented by Misty Mundae
Voodoun Blues synopsis:
A short, black and white, 16mm film featuring a pernicious practitioner of black magic (Katie Bordeaux) performing a malevolent voodoo ritual, in order to seek some morbid retribution from a reclusive ex-lover (Misty Mundae). The motive behind the exhibition is ambiguous but inevitable, as the vindictive priestess hexes her victim in dreams, in consciousness, and ultimately in death.
From the Contributor
VOODOUN BLUES DVD Contents
- VOODOUN BLUES short film by Misty Mundae
- Misty Mundae VOODOUN BLUES Interview (August 2004)
- MAKING BLUES the recording of the Voudon Blues soundtrack
- SOUR MILK short film by Joe Miller
- NIGHT OF WHORROR HOPPERS short film by Katie Bordeaux
- Trailers to Soon-to-be-Released Misty Mundae features
"Voodoun Blues is something of a Misty collectible DVD that Misty's most devoted fans will definitely want to own. The whole disc has about 50 minutes of material, and the actual film Voodoun Blues has a running time of roughly six minutes. Wait a minute, stay with me now. It may only be six minutes long (but don't forget all the extras), but this is an important artifact of Misty's career. It is basically a student film, and student films are often quite short. Misty made this film during her 2003 fall semester in film school, and it claimed the prize of Best Short Film in the school's short film competition.
The short film is actually a rather haunting piece of work. Shot on 16mm black and white film, Voodoun Blues is an avant-garde film featuring a classic retro, somewhat expressionistic style. Stop-motion cinematography gives the film a surreal look that hearkens back to the early days of cinema.
Let's talk extras. The DVD comes with two short films by Misty's colleagues and fellow filmmakers. Joe Miller's Sour Milk features Misty in an uncredited role; I thought this film was really weird until I saw Katie Bourdeaux's Night of the Whorror Hoppers. Surreal barely begins to describe these oddly contrasting bonus short films. My favorite part of the DVD is actually a 2004 interview with Misty Mundae in which she describes the making of her short film from conception to final editing. Just wait until you hear the actual event that served as Misty's source of inspiration for the film's conception. This discussion gets slightly technical as Misty explains the positives and negatives of the film techniques she used - film vs. video, reversible film vs. negative film, double splicing, etc. The upshot of it all is that Misty really made this film the old-fashioned way, even in terms of creating the stop-motion cinematography. In addition to the revealing interview, you get a look at Misty working with the musicians supplying the soundtrack to the film. Misty originally planned on using Screamin' Jay Hawkins' recording I Put a Spell On You, but she couldn't get the rights to use it. The original music composed for Voodoun Blues, though, seems to work beautifully and adds depth to the overall presentation. The DVD also comes with a Voodoun Blues postcard and five trailers for current and upcoming films starring Misty: Screaming Dead (which is an excellent horror film, I must say), Bite Me!, the eagerly-anticipated Lust For Dracula, and two films I had not yet heard anything about - Sinful Wives and Chantal (both of which look very promising indeed)." - Daniel Jolley on Amazon