The Brooklyn Film Festival 2013 is currently unreeling, and will feature on June 9th the premiere of director Dan Eberle’s fourth film, Cut To Black. A stylized, contemporary re-imagining of film noir, Cut To Black was shot and is set in New York City. the thriller is written, directed, produced, and stars quadruple threat Eberle.
In Cut To Black, Eberle plays the lead, disgraced former NYPD detective Bill Ivers. A convicted felon, Ivers is on a self-destructive path. He’s plagued by debt, struggling with alcoholism, and carrying on a risky affair with his landlord’s wife.
If that weren’t bad enough, his frequent, mysterious nosebleeds portend serious health issues, but Ivers is already a broken man. Enter two men from his past. Gunther, an ambitious former police colleague, and the man who gives him his orders, City Councilman John Lord – Ivers’ former mentor and the source of his troubles, looking to make amends.
Presented with a lucrative offer he can’t refuse, Ivers agrees to help Lord in a bid to reconcile with his estranged daughter Jessica by tracking down her stalker. To do so, Ivers must enter Jessica’s nocturnal world, The Confessional, the club where she works as a stripper, and contend with her suspicious boyfriend and his disreputable colleagues.
As he becomes entranced by the young beauty, Ivers uncovers a tangled web of corruption and deceit that threatens more than one life. But also offers the chance for true redemption.
Shot in black and white, and featuring a creative score mixing modern electronic music with traditional jazz, Cut To Black is a stylish crime thriller adopting and updating the conventions of film noir to create a singular expression of the dark underbelly of New York City and its desperate denizens. Eberle employs noir’s distinctive associations with moral ambiguity to underscore Ivers’ internal and external conflicts.
The film’s black and white palette serves as a counterpoint to the layers of grey gradually revealed about Ivers’ character as he tries to find meaning in what his life has become, before it’s too late. Performances by Eberle and the ensemble cast borrow from the archetypes of film noir but inject a gritty urban edge, in a cinematic setting that’s at once classic and modern.
Dan Eberle’s previous features include JailCity, The Local, and Prayer To A Vengeful God. Presented by Insurgent Pictures, Cut To Black is written and directed by Dan Eberle, produced by Danielle Primiceri, Dan Eberle, and Per Anderson, associate produced by Tommy Shull, and executive produced by Beau Allulli and Tim Guetterman.
Cut To Black will screen at the Brooklyn Film Festival on Sunday, June 9th at 8pm, at Windmill Studios NYC, 287 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn. And followed by a Q&A with the director and cast. Ticket information is online at: http://www.brooklynfilmfestival.org/tickets/
Cut To Black Trailer:
