David Zellner

Alien invaders, in the form of a 1950’s biker gang, are sent on a mission to conquer Earth.

In the misty forests of North America, a family of Sasquatches—possibly the last of their enigmatic kind—embark on an absurdist, epic, hilarious, and ultimately poignant journey over the course of one year. These shaggy and noble giants fight for survival as they find themselves on a collision course with the ever-changing world around them.

Oregon, a small town near the sea, around 1870. Henry, a grieving man who aspires to preach as a way to overcome his unfortunate past, reunites with eccentric pioneer Samuel Alabaster, who has hired him to officiate at his marriage to the precious Penelope. What Henry ignores is that both must embark on a dangerous journey through the inhospitable wilderness to meet her.

In late 2015, "Bright Ideas" magazine and its publisher, the innovative crowdfunding and distribution platform Seed & Spark, commissioned directing duo the Zellner Bros. (KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER) to make a short piece in response to a Criterion Collection release that they considered inspiring. The brothers chose Louis Malle's wild, hallucinogenic BLACK MOON (1975), itself a tripped-out reimagining of "Alice in Wonderland." Shot in the woods near their Austin homes, BLACK SOMETHING captures Malle's blending of idyllic pastoral imagery with nightmarish fantasy, distilling it into a skin-crawlingly unsettling three-minute short.

Frustrated with her mundane life, a Tokyo office worker becomes obsessed with a fictional movie that she mistakes for a documentary. Fixating on a scene where stolen cash is buried in North Dakota, she travels to America to find it.

On the outskirts of Austin, 10-year-old Annie tears around on her BMX bike, hurls dough at cars, and smashes things up with her baseball bat. Her father, a goat-farmer-cum-demolition-derby driver, does little parenting. Annie has no friends her age, so her daily routine is filled with solitary mischief. Playing in the woods one day, she hears a woman’s plaintive call for help from an abandoned well. Though Annie feels driven to visit the well daily, she is unsure about how to deal with the woman’s plight.

An unprecedented peek at the mysteries of nature.

A recently divorced man tries to find the one aspect of his marriage that still matters to him: his missing cat, Goliath.

The tragic 1978 story of the The Jibcutters, the last great American alt-bluegrass band.

While on their way to a mariachi recital, a devastating car crash forces a mother and her two sons to confront the truth about their past.

A black comedy about an altruistic yet deranged preacher who heads deep into the Australian Outback in hopes of saving the soul of a man who has abandoned his faith.

A take on the classic Abbott and Costello baseball routine.

A despicable young man, at the end of his life, espouses his comically bleak and bitter world view to his only friend, his dog Foxy.

Fact and fiction collide on the high seas.

A Big Brother mentor has some bad news for his young charge. His confession is no less poignant for being absurd.

A closeted homosexual phones a crisis line from inside his closet.

Sam (David Zellner) runs into Lacey (Stephanie Wilson) walking her dog in the park. She doesn’t seem too thrilled to see him. But he is really, really thrilled to see Choo-Choo. The dog used to be his and he is less-than-thrilled to learn that Lacey has since re-named the dog Rummy. This fateful first encounter (after a break-up three years ago) triggers a rapid escalation of tensions in this typically funny and bizarre early Zellner tale.

Strangers in a strange land, Bulbovia’s dimmest explorers attempt to dutifully colonize a new world but soon find their buttoned-up shirts and rational thoughts melting away into beetle-eating, tree-molesting, wife-swapping chaos.

In a world where moral corruption and prosperity go hand-in-hand, James is out of his element. He's unpopular, whiny and cranky, not to mention a second-rate street mime fond of belittling his audience. James longs for a life or reckless abandon, much like that of his unscrupulous roommate Frank Feldspar - a thief, murderer, and a professional poet who is loved by all. James enthusiastically embraces the lifestyle of a hardened criminal, and he teams up with Frank for a daring armed robbery.