About.
Our slate is loaded with stories that explore the feelings of displacement and change that dominate global political discourse. What connects our films, the HP Lovecraft adaptations Backwoods and Whisperer, and our original scripts The Birdwatcher and C-H-A-I-N, is the manner with which our characters look behind what initially appears innocuous – a book, a recording, a retreat and a drawing - to pull the curtain on reality and reveal their own fears and prejudices, and those of our audience.
The mysteries surrounding our characters often present no immediate explanation, but through scratching at the surface of their environment they begin to question their own understanding of the world. While Backwoods, Whisperer and The Birdwatcher use cosmic horror conventions to drill into the idea of xenophobia, C-H-A-I-N aligns elements of folk horror – the power of nature, a connection to the rural landscape, a fear of outsiders – to the existential dread of a generation faced with the danger of catastrophic climate change. In this ecological drama, we ask the audience to consider how one character’s loss of identity is symbiotic to the accelerating loss of plant life, denigrated over time before being lost forever. The drivers of late capitalism consumerism and an unending demand for natural resources and the subsequent impact on the natural environment directly align to a diminishing sense of ourselves, and our communities.
Work placement opportunities for people from a diverse range of backgrounds in a real filmmaking environment has been a keystone in Myskatonic’s ethos – with the aim to lend confidence to new and emerging filmmakers to make their own voices heard. On Backwoods, we offered opportunities to trainees across all departments. We partnered with Falmouth University’s Sound/Image Cinema Lab in 2022 to provide over 40 placements on The Birdwatcher, in both instances working in support of professional crew. We are committed to developing new talent, and increasing the visibility of the regional film industry and culture of Cornwall to a worldwide audience.
Biographies
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Writer/Directorhttps://www.imdb.com/name/nm5606217/
Ryan is based in Cornwall, and has worked in music video, live performance capture and documentary work for over a decade. He has toured with acts including Slayer, Green Day, Trivium, Caspian, Deftones, Mastodon and Robert Plant, shooting everywhere from Melbourne to Santiago and Los Angeles, and collaborating with some of the world’s biggest record labels through his company Crashburn.
These productions have total views exceeding 100 million through streaming platforms. Backwoods, an adaptation of a short story by H.P. Lovecraft saw Ryan shift to narrative drama. The film premiered in the USA at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, winning the H.P. Lovecraft Award in 2019, before making its UK premiere at the BIFA and BAFTA qualifying London Short Film Festival in 2020. The film was subsequently licensed for release on BluRay as part of H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and was included both in the film and as an extra on the BluRay release of Kier-La Janisse’s definitive folk horror documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched in 2021.
Backwoods made its online premiere through the independent cinema platform Director’s Notes in 2022.
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Producerhttps://www.imdb.com/name/nm7050103/
Kingsley is based in Cornwall and specialises in the production of narrative shorts and feature films. He is Head of Film & Television at Falmouth University, and a member of the Sound/Image Cinema Lab – a unit within the university that develops short and feature film projects, connecting national partners with crew drawn from staff, students, graduates, and the local community.
Kingsley has worked as an executive producer on the feature films Wilderness (dir: Justin John Doherty) and The Tape (dir: Martha Tilston) both released in 2021, Long Way Back (dir. Brett Harvey) released in cinemas 2022 and on streaming services in 2023 and the Film4 production Enys Men (dir: Mark Jenkin, 2022), which premiered in Cannes as part of Director’s Fortnight in 2022, and was released by the BFI in the UK and Neon in the US in 2023. He is an associate producer on the documentary Atlas Pool (dir: Jane Darke and Andrew Tebbs 2024), and is developing the TV documentary series Nevermade.
He established Myskatonic Films with Ryan producing Backwoods (2019) and The Birdwatcher (2022) and is developing two feature films with the same creative team, Whisperer and C-H-A-I-N, securing support from the regional Screen Growth fund in 2022. A feature film project with writer Carl Grose and o-Region films, Horse Piss for Blood, secured BFI Early Development funding in 2022. Kingsley completed the BFI Creative Producers Lab in 2021, Creative UK’s Selling Screen and Foundations schemes in 2022, and joined BAFTA in October 2022.