ABOUT the FILM

Atlanta filmmaker Milford Thomas's CLAIRE is a 53-minute black and white silent film shot on an antique hand-crank 35mm camera (Mitchell Standard). The film is always accompanied in theatre by the live "Orchestra de Lune," an 11-piece chamber ensemble performing an original score by Atlanta composer Anne Richardson.

CLAIRE’s story is loosely based “Kaguyahime,” on an old Japanese fairytale about an elderly childless couple that finds a child from the moon in a stalk of bamboo and raises her as their own. Thomas’ version tells the story of an elderly male couple on a farm in the rural 1920s South who find the moon princess in an ear of corn.

CLAIRE was shot in Atlanta and other locations throughout Georgia, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina. Cast members include Toniet Gallego as “Claire”, Jim Ferguson, Mish P. DeLight, and Allen Jeffrey Rein. Funding was achieved through a series of fabulous fundraising events, the re-financing of the filmmaker's home, credit cards, a few grants, financial gifts, and tremendous in-kind donations.