Some words from our head programmer Steve Balshaw.
The Grimmfest team are devastated to learn of the death, seemingly by suicide, of the extraordinary Jeremiah Kipp. A brilliant, visionary filmmaker, Jeremiah had in recent years brought his fine eye and sharp intelligence to the video-game inspired THE MORTUARY ASSISTANT, and the African-American folk horror THE GEECHEE WITCH, but he is probably still best known for the remarkable SLAPFACE, which combines backwoods folk horror with a devastating, unflinching, emotionally brutal, and all-too-painfully real depiction of dysfunctional family dynamics, and which marked him out immediately as one of horror’s most distinctive and thought-provoking voices. The film screened at Grimmfest in 2021, and was a Reaper Award-winner and audience favourite, a film that our regulars still talk about with love and admiration. It’s one for the ages; already a genre classic.
Jeremiah was a unique, genuinely original voice in cinema; mostly in horror, but he also, somewhat unexpectedly, made a lovely little romantic comedy short, DON’T PICK UP, starring Keith David and Kathryn Erbe, which shows off his skills as a director of actors and dialogue-driven drama – and comedy! – outside of the genre. He sent me a rough cut screener, and I wonder if he did so in part because he was nervous to have stepped outside of his genre “comfort zone”. But he needn’t have been. It was a pitch perfect little short, the kind of thing I would have snapped up for any one of the non-genre festivals I have programmed for over the years. And I messaged him to tell him as much. I suspect that there was no kind of film, no genre, that he could not have found his own voice within.
But horror was his great love as a filmmaker. He was a passionate champion of the genre, and one of the mainstays of the New York Independent Horror scene, alongside Larry Fessenden, the Adams Family, Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks, all of whom he knew, and most of whom he had collaborated with and encouraged and supported over the years. Jeremiah had extraordinary chops as a filmmaker, a unique voice and vision, but he was also truly one of the good guys; mentoring younger filmmakers, always there with a supportive word and a positive opinion about up and coming talents.
We never met in person, sadly, because he was already working on his next film at the time of the Grimmfest screening, and, much to his regret, was unable to attend, so he sent some of his cast instead. But we had a conversation or two via Zoom at the time, and remained Facebook friends ever after. Our last exchange on Facebook, was less than a fortnight ago, just before I got caught up in the madness of this year’s Grimmfest, and, typically, Jeremiah was championing some of his fellow New York genre filmmakers, John Adams, and Larry Fessenden, both of whom have films out right now.
This is a huge, huge loss. To the horror genre, to independent filmmaking as a whole, and to the community that we are all a part of. My Facebook feed since the news broke yesterday evening has been filled with tributes and eulogies from filmmakers, actors, festivals, journalists, critics, podcasters, and above all, from friends; friends and loved ones galore. Nobody saw it coming; everyone is shocked and heartbroken; numb with grief and loss, unable to process how such a positive force for good, with so much energy, so much apparent optimism, should lose heart so absolutely, and seemingly so suddenly. The signs are not always as obvious as we think.
We lost one of the good guys. And, though I only knew him via the virtual world, I still feel like I lost a good friend.
R.I.P., Jeremiah Kipp. You will be missed.