Heat and Sunlight

Director: Rob Nilsson
Screenwriters: Rob Nilsson

Institute History

  • 1988 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Once in a great while a small film comes forth that truly breaks new ground. Heat and Sunlight is that kind of effort, and perhaps one of the most personally risky films ever committed to celluloid. Rob Nilsson’s Heat and Sunlight is an extraordinary achievement. Heat and Sunlight chronicles the final 16 hours of a love affair between photojournalist Mel Hurley (Rob Nilsson) and Carmen (Consuelo Faust), his dancer/choreographer girlfriend.

As Mel withdraws into his sense of isolation, anger and jealousy, other difficult and obsessive memories begin to emerge: haunting images of a dangerous trip to starving Biafra in 1970. With a mounting sense of futility. Mel seems on the verge of a mental collapse until his life-long friends convince him to confront Carmen. What results is one of the riskiest, sexiest, funniest couplings in recent memory. The effect is honest, gritty, gutsy, and finally, cathartic.

— Lawrence Smith

Screening Details

Sundance Film Festival Awards

Credits

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