''The Singing Forest'' is a 2003 American romantic

fantasy film Fantasy films are films that belong to the fantasy genre with fantastic themes, usually magic, supernatural events, mythology, folklore, or exotic fantasy worlds. The genre is considered a form of speculative fiction alongside science fiction f ...

written, produced, and directed by Jorge Ameer and starring Jon Sherrin, Erin Leigh Price, and Craig Pinkston. The film received negative reviews.

Plot

Christopher is a widower after his wife of 22 years, Savannah, dies. He begins

drinking Drinking is the act of ingesting water or other liquids into the body through the mouth, proboscis, or elsewhere. Humans drink by swallowing, completed by peristalsis in the esophagus. The physiological processes of drinking vary widely among o ...

and becomes obsessed with the theory of past lives. Before long, he is convinced he is actually the reincarnation of a German resistance fighter (Jo) who was hanged by the Nazis for hiding Jews during

The Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

. His situation becomes even more complex as his daughter Destiny's wedding approaches, and Christopher's sense of

déjà vu ''Déjà vu'' ( , ; "already seen") is a French loanword for the phenomenon of feeling as though one has lived through the present situation before.Schnider, Armin. (2008). ''The Confabulating Mind: How the Brain Creates Reality''. Oxford Univer ...

around her fiancé, Ben, is enough to convince him that he and Ben were gay lovers during a past life. As Christopher becomes increasingly disturbed and goes about seducing his daughter's future husband, he begins to reveal the strange, violent path his life had taken well before his wife died. Ben gives in to Christopher's seduction and eventually visits Christopher's psychic to confirm he really was Jo's lover Alexander in a past life. Destiny discovers their affair and eventually gives them her blessing. In the end, she gives her father away at the church wedding that was originally supposed to be hers. The psychic reveals that Destiny had never really existed. Instead, she had been the spirit of a miscarriage Savannah had after she was raped. The spirit had always been destined to bring Christopher (Jo) and Ben (Alexander) back together in their present lives.

Production

The film was written and conceived in

Torino Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. T ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

Firenze Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

and

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

(all in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

). The

Torino Film Festival The Torino Film Festival (also called the Turin Film Festival, TFF) is an international film festival held annually in Turin, Italy. Held every November, it is the second largest film festival in Italy, following the Venice Film Festival. It was f ...

advised and assisted the producers in the making of the film.film credits Many of the minor film roles were performed by members of the production crew. For example, Louis Perez (the pastor) accounted for grip / electric. Sal Roman (Stephen), too, is credited as grip.

Dustin Lance Black Dustin Lance Black (born June 10, 1974) is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and LGBT rights activist. He is known for writing the film ''Milk (2008 American film), Milk'', for which he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenpl ...

is credited as ''L. Black'' for his editing and as ''Lance Black'' for his acting role (Bill). He is mentioned for the third time within the ''special thanks'' section of the credits. Renea Plant (television host) was art director and Gregory Saites (Nazi guard #4) was stunt coordinator to the film. Keith Holland was first assistant cinematographer and Sam Tyler Wayman is credited as first assistant director. Smitty Smith was boom operator / swing for the film. Andy Sowerwine was sound mixer. Still photography was done by Alistaire. Make up was done by Julia Santana and Christine Edwards. Wedding wardrobe was provided by Maria Roybal and B'B's Tuxido, the filming equipment was available by Ultravision Hollywood. Jon Jacobs was casting consultant. The music partly consists of classical pieces performed by Jose Herring: * Creation * Adagio *

Piano Sonata No. 5 (Beethoven) Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 5 in C minor, Op. 10, No. 1 was composed some time during 1796–98. The first movement of the sonata has a meter, the second movement , and the final movement . Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 5 is a first-p ...

* Moonlight Sonata –

Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven) The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, marked ''Quasi una fantasia'', Op. 27, No. 2, is a piano sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven. It was completed in 1801 and dedicated in 1802 to his pupil Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. The popular name ''Mo ...

The soundtrack also includes several modern songs: * Crazy People, Crazy World (composed and produced by Earthman and Judy Gray) * (produced by Ranato Serio, Maurizio Fabrizio, and Claudio Guidetti) The original Holocaust photographs shown in the film were taken from the 1960 German

educational Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Vari ...

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

'' The Yellow Star: The Persecution of the Jews in Europe 1933-45'' (orig. ''Der gelbe Stern – Die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945'') by Gerhard Schoenberner.

Cast

* John Sherrin as Christopher ** David Guzzone as young Christopher * Erin Leigh Price as Destiny * Craig Pinkston as Ben / Alexander * Eric Morris as Jo * Shelley Price as Savannah * Jorge Ameer as Charlie * Lance Black as Bill * Sal Roman as Stephen * Toni Zobel as

psychic A psychic is a person who claims to use extrasensory perception (ESP) to identify information hidden from the normal senses, particularly involving telepathy or clairvoyance, or who performs acts that are apparently inexplicable by natural laws, ...

* Marc Ambrose as

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

guard * Randal Craig as Nazi guard * Nolo Ortiz as Nazi guard * Justin Huddleston as Nazi guard * Gregory Saites as Nazi guard * Emre Ozpirincci as Holocaust victim * Skyler Thomas as Holocaust victim * Lisa Marx as television guest * Renae Plant as television host * Louis Perez as pastor *

Jean Carol Jean Carol is an American actress. Early life Carol was born in Hillsdale, New Jersey. She acted in New York theatrical productions as a child. When she was 11, her family relocated to Miami. She graduated from Florida State University, where ...

as Emily * Gerry Rand as Fred * Colin Campbell as Heinz

Reception

''The Singing Forest'' has a rare 0% rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, based on 9 reviews. It also has a rare 1/100 rating on

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, based on 7 reviews and is on their list of worst reviewed films. Reviewing the film in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'',

Stephen Holden Stephen Holden (born July 18, 1941) is an American writer, poet, and music and film critic. Biography Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963. He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually be ...

wrote, "''The Singing Forest'' was written and directed by Jorge Ameer, whose film ''Strippers'' opened three years ago and remained the single worst movie I had ever reviewed — until now."

References

External links