RIDE LIKE LIGHTNING, CRASH LIKE THUNDER

As a storm approaches, the creeping hand of history disrupts nature and civility in the Hudson River regions of Upstate New York.

What is the meaning behind the film’s title?

Fern Silva : It was a reference to when Rip Van Winkle gets lost in the Catskills and finds the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew in a cave drinking and bowling. It was said that the thunder and lightning came from them misbehaving on the mountainsides. After Rip consumes their liquid, he falls asleep for twenty years and wakes up to a world that is no longer free post-American Revolution. The title is also in the lyrics of a Big Youth song at the beginning of the film.

Can you talk a bit about the “creeping hand of history” that eerily appears throughout the film?

It was mostly another reference to the ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew in Rip Van Winkle, but it was also a reference to the paranoia in the air. I made this film around the time of the presidential election so that was certainly lingering… and all of the election signs everywhere were impossible to escape. I also thought a lot about John Carpenter and specifically The Fog. Unfortunately, that hand might be creeping around the corner for some time now…

(Interview by Meghan Gilligan, the-take.com, 2017)