SPRING NIGHT SUMMER NIGHT

Italian neorealism meets the coal-mining country of southeast Ohio in this little-seen film emerging from the 1960s American independent cinema movement. Director Joseph L. Anderson, a film professor at the University of Ohio, utilized non-professional actors, on-location photography, a shoestring budget, and a passionate knowledge of international film to create what Richard Brody of The New Yorker calls a “tense, myth-drenched drama of liberation and retribution.”

Carl (Ted Heimerdinger) and Jessie (Larue Hall) are half siblings who feel trapped by the existential and economic pressures of living in the small mining town of Canaan, Ohio. Their shared rebellion soon takes on the form of an illicit love affair depicted in interwoven sequences of lusty poeticism and ethnographic vérité. When Jessie becomes pregnant, the tension between the couple’s youthful vitality and the dire realities of rural society leads to consequences both despairing and hopeful.

SPRING NIGHT SUMMER NIGHT premiered at the Pesaro Film Festival in 1967 alongside new works by Jean-Luc Godard (ALPHAVILLE), Joris Ivens (MISÈRE AU BORINAGE), Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet (CLASS RELATIONS), and Jonas Mekas (JONAS MEKAS: THE MAJOR WORKS). However, the film was bumped from its premiere slot at the 1968 New York Film Festival to make room for John Cassavetes’ FACES, the fate of SPRING NIGHT SUMMER NIGHT was nearly sealed when its original distributor insisted that it be re-cut as an exploitation film under the title MISS JESSICA IS PREGNANT. Fortunately, thanks to the brilliant restoration efforts of Peter Conheim and Ross Lipman - along with the generous support of director Nicolas Winding Refn’s byNWR - the film was scanned in 4K resolution from the 35mm camera negative, and carefully reconstructed according to Joseph L. Anderson’s original vision.