Ritual Of Fire

Arthouse short film post-production project, edited, graded and sound design by Matyas Kelemen. "Ritual of Fire" directed by Ryan Uzilevski, was a reinterpretation of a project originally named "The River of Copsa Mica", a mining town in Sibiu County, Transylvania, Romania.

A magical short film about a young boy's encounter with a Pagan fire circle in xenophobic Eastern Europe during the lead up to WWI.

This independent film with a strong social message was produced by Skydog in 2005. The film was made during George W. Bushes second term. It was deemed as a response to the war crying post 911 America that seemed to suffer from historical amnesia. The escalation of violence in the Arab world, and ethnocentrism on American soil under the guise of patriotism.

The Skydog team wanted to tell a story about another time, not that long ago where this line of nationalistic racism became paramount in Europe, ultimately leading up to the catastrophic first World War and widespread Genocide.

Some of the visual inspiration for the film came from Antonín Kratochvíl's photo-journalism of post communist Eastern Europe, as well as other historic images from the region.

Filming took place on location over two weekends in Upstate New York. Producer, Dustin Highbridge and the rest of the Brooklyn based production team rented school buses as well as the facilities at an off-season summer camp to deal with the rather large cast and crew.