The third film in KCP's Vermont Mosher trilogy… After more than five years in development, we're delighted to present Disappearances, the third in our trilogy of Vermont “frontier films” now in its final stages. Bolstered by a $35,000 production grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a group of heroic Frontier Partners, LP investors, we shot the film in April/May 2005 with extraordinary community support and completed post-production early 2006.
Based on the award-winning novel by Howard Frank Mosher, Disappearances is a spellbinding tale of high-stakes whiskey-smuggling, a family's mysterious past, and a young boy's rite of passage.
Quebec Bill, desperate to raise money to preserve his endangered cattle herd at the end of a long winter, resorts to whiskey smuggling, a traditional family occupation. He takes his son, Wild Bill, on an unforgettable journey that will long remain etched in the viewer's mind, through vast reaches of the Canadian wilderness and into a haunted and elusive past. What they find is the stuff of genuine legend.
The Place:Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, the edge of the North Country frontier straddling the Vermont/Canadian border.
The Cast: Kris Kristofferson stars as Quebec Bill Bonhomme. He's been a film star, Grammy-winning country music singer-songwriter, Golden Gloves boxing champ, and Rhodes Scholar. Kris calls the script “the best” and “most original” he's read. Other actors include Gary Farmer (Dead Man, Pow Wow Highway, Ghost Dog, The Score, Adaptation) as professional whiskey-runner Henry Coville; Academy Award-nominee Genevieve Bujold (La Guerre Est Finie, King of Hearts, Tightrope, Choose Me, The Moderns, Dead Ringers, Anne of a Thousand Days) as magical realist sage, Cordelia; Lothaire Bluteau (Jesus of Montreal, Orlando, I Shot Andy Warhol, Urbania) as the notorious Canadian bootlegger Carcajou; William Sanderson (HBO's Deadwood, Blade Runner, Newhart Show) as Rat Kinneson; Luis Guzman (Boogie Nights, Carlito's Way, The Limey, Traffic, Punch Drunk Love; Magnolia, The Count of Monte Christo) as one of the monks, Brother St. Hilaire; and Charlie McDermott, a young up-and-coming actor (The Village, KCP's Windy Acres.)
The Creative Team: Our production designer Carl Sprague headed up an extraordinary art department and took it upon himself to move a 1932 Cadillac from Georgia to Vermont to be featured in some of the film's most crucial scenes. Carl was art director on The Royal Tennenbaums and State and Main, and assistant art director on Speilberg's Amistad and Scorcese's Age of Innocence. Costume designer Jill Kliber was also instrumental in developing the authentic period look of the film. Jill was one of two designers on the Oscar-nominated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Cinematographer Wolfgang Held also worked closely with director Jay Craven to plan and execute the many complex exterior water scenes and stunt sequences for the film. Wolfgang shot the stunning Academy Award-nominated film Children of the Underground.
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