Bold Storytelling Studio
Explore unique narratives in independent film and documentary art.
Bold Storytelling Studio
Explore unique narratives in independent film and documentary art.
About Lilac Creative Studio
Our Vision
At Lilac Creative Studio, we believe in the power of storytelling to connect people and evoke emotions. Our mission is to craft compelling narratives that resonate with audiences and inspire change.
Little Lantern -- Shorts and Stopmotion
Over the Charles, Into the Night
Over the Charles, Into the Night
Over the Charles, Into the Night
Over the Charles, Into the Night reimagines Paul Revere’s midnight ride as a tense, human drama unfolding in the shadows of April 18, 1775. When Dr. Joseph Warren learns that British forces plan to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, he dispatches two riders—Paul Revere and William Dawes—to warn the countryside. Crossing the Charles River under cover of darkness, Revere rides through frightened households and divided Patriot networks, finding leaders uncertain, unprepared, and afraid of what rebellion truly demands.
Along the road, Revere and Dawes unexpectedly encounter Dr. Samuel Prescott, a young physician. Together, the three riders press toward Concord until British patrols ambush them in the night.
American Decay
Over the Charles, Into the Night
Over the Charles, Into the Night
Morgan Rivers II, a young man drifting toward disillusionment, rides his electric bike into the overgrown outskirts of the shuttered Presidents Park, a once-grand museum now bankrupt and left to erode into the earth. In the basket of his bike sits a canvas bag embroidered with Rivers II—a subtle reminder of the legacy he’s both running from and seeking.
Up the Creek
Over the Charles, Into the Night
Pig & Grump: Of Mushrooms And Men
In 2059, two estranged childhood friends return to their collapsing hometown for the funeral of a teammate, only to find the poisoned land mirrors their own fractured bond. As gasoline fuels a broken America and fossil-fuel cults rise from the ashes of government, their grief curdles into accusation and violence at the polluted creek where their friendship began. A dystopian drama of memory, betrayal, and the quiet end of a world.
Pig & Grump: Of Mushrooms And Men
Pig & Grump: The Year Things Got Weird
Pig & Grump: Of Mushrooms And Men
In this introductory chapter, we meet Hogarth Barnswoggle, a stubbornly solitary hermit of the Mossridge Wilds, and Gravyboat, his mildly chaotic but fiercely loyal morel-hunting pig. Their peaceful life in the forest is upended when Gravyboat’s supernatural snout uncovers glowing mushrooms, hyperactive tree spirits, and the unintended consequences of a new statewide policy that magically binds forest creatures to paperwork. Amid troll tollbooths, bureaucratic thickets, and a disastrous encounter with Orsen Wellsby’s “lost masterpiece,” Hogarth and Gravyboat stumble into their reluctant roles as protectors of the forest — even if Hogarth wishes everyone would kindly leave him alone.
Pig & Grump: The Forest Remembers
Pig & Grump: The Year Things Got Weird
Pig & Grump: The Year Things Got Weird
As strange forces ripple through Mossridge Wilds, old magic begins to stir, and ancient woodland entities rise to challenge the new bureaucratic order. In this chapter, Hogarth and Gravyboat confront the Bramble Court, defend themselves in magical small claims disputes, and witness the Great Morel Migration, as fungi flee shifting environmental regulations. Alongside new threats — including D.B. Couper’s chronically misplaced briefcase and the unpredictable chaos unleashed by a rogue Hedge-Witch — the forest begins revealing secrets of its past. Hogarth learns that the land itself remembers every broken promise, every strange law, and every creature who ever walked its mossy paths… and it’s starting to talk back.
Pig & Grump: The Year Things Got Weird
Pig & Grump: The Year Things Got Weird
Pig & Grump: The Year Things Got Weird
The final chapter dives into full-blown magical absurdity as political, mystical, and cosmic forces collide in Mossridge Wilds. Hogarth faces an invasion of enchanted tax assessors, a zoning board specter threatening to condemn his beloved cabin, and a full-scale mayoral campaign launched by a dramatic, self-appointed Orsen Wellsby. With Toby McGuire swinging unexpectedly into heroism and D.B. Couper parachuting out of nowhere (again), Hogarth and Gravyboat must confront Sir Mulchmire, a compost elemental determined to absorb the entire forest into “perfect organic order.” The chapter culminates in the legendary Last Morel Feast, a chaotic celebration where the future of Mossridge hangs in the balance — and where Hogarth realizes that even the grumpiest hermit can’t escape destiny… or his pig.
The Call of the Lune
The Call of the Lune
The Call of the Lune
In rural Vermont, grieving son Oscar inherits his mother’s cottage and begins nightly walks under an unnervingly still moon. There he encounters Lune—a spectral muse whose voice blends loon’s cry, moonlight, and madness—drawing him into a spiral where grief and obsession blur. A psychological horror about silence, memory, and the haunting persistence of feminine power
Documentaries
Diamond in the Rust
Where the Light Still Glows
Diamond in the Rust is a documentary exploring the decades-long redevelopment failures of Willets Point in Queens, better known as “The Iron Triangle.” Once home to hundreds of auto shops and immigrant-run businesses, the neighborhood has endured broken promises of affordable housing, stalled projects, and political battles spanning multiple administrations. Now, with New York Mets owner Steve Cohen proposing an $8 billion casino and entertainment complex beside Citi Field, the film asks whether this latest plan will finally deliver on long-promised housing and renewal—or simply mark another chapter in a history of displacement and profit-driven urban planning.
Where the Light Still Glows
Where the Light Still Glows
Where the Light Still Glows is a creative nonfiction documentary exploring the quiet disappearance of fireflies and glowworms across the United States, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Blending immersive low-light cinematography with personal narration and scientific insight, the film examines what we lose—biologically, culturally, and emotionally—when these luminous species fade from our landscapes. Through intimate encounters with conservationists, community stewards, and fragile habitats, the film invites viewers to rediscover these glowing creatures as both ecological indicators and symbols of wonder at the edge of extinction.
Boarding Pass
Boarding Pass uncovers how Avelo Airlines—hailed as a fast-growing budget carrier—has quietly profited from a government contract to operate deportation flights for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), raising urgent questions about corporate ethics, immigration policy, and community accountability in cities like New Haven, Connecticut.
Bitter Sugar
Bitter Sugar tells the story of Veruca Salt, the Chicago-born alt-rock band fronted by Louise Post and Nina Gordon, whose unapologetically loud, female-driven sound helped define 1990s rock. Through archival footage and present-day interviews, the film traces their meteoric rise, turbulent split, and enduring legacy as trailblazers of women in hard rock.
Shattered Streets
Shattered Streets investigates the intersection of post-apartheid urban neglect and the environmental consequences of structural racism in Cape Town—uncovering how the residues of apartheid still shape the city’s landscapes, communities, and ecological vulnerability.
Liminal Spaces: America of the 2000s
A meditative, atmospheric journey through the abandoned environments of 2000s America—shopping plazas, school auditoriums, arcades, offices, megachurches, malls, call-centers, and roadside attractions—examining what our forgotten spaces reveal about who we were and what we’ve become. “Liminal Spaces: America of the 2000s” is a visually driven essay-documentary that explores the cultural, economic, and emotional residue of the places that defined an era—and then outlived it.
Using haunting cinematography, ambient sound, and a personal first-person voiceover, the film becomes a meditation on change, obsolescence, and the quiet emotional charge of spaces caught between life and abandonment.
The Palmer of Bucees
Free For All: The StreamEast Sting
Thank You for Not Making Sense
In Palmer Lake, Colorado, the proposed arrival of a 74,000-square-foot Buc-ee’s travel plaza tears a small town apart—exposing the fractures of modern capitalism, community identity, ecological limits, and the fight over what “progress” really means. Nestled between Denver and Colorado Springs, Palmer Lake (pop. ~2,500) sits atop a dwindling aquifer and preserves one of the last vestiges of open space along the Front Range. When Buc-ee’s—a Texas-based travel-center brand famous for its towering gas-pump arrays and over-the-top convenience-store experience—announces plans to build a mega-site nearby, the town is thrust into crisis.
Thank You for Not Making Sense
Free For All: The StreamEast Sting
Thank You for Not Making Sense
Thank You for Not Making Sense is a nonlinear, avant-garde documentary that drifts through the lives and work of unconventional artists who embrace absurdity, surrealism, and contradiction as acts of creative defiance. Structured like a cinematic sketchbook, the film weaves together dreamlike imagery, fragmented soundscapes, and intimate portraits to reveal how “nonsense” can be a radical form of connection and empathy. Rather than explain art, it listens to it—becoming a love letter to confusion, vulnerability, and the beauty of resisting clarity.
Free For All: The StreamEast Sting
Free For All: The StreamEast Sting
Free For All: The StreamEast Sting
A sprawling global network that delivered live sports for free to millions is dismantled in a coordinated international sting. Free for All traces the rise of Streameast, the moral and economic fault lines of digital content, and the enforcement battle to reclaim the game. Over the past year, Streameast logged over 1.6 billion visits across more than 80 domains, offering unauthorized live streaming of major sports leagues. In August 2025, Egyptian police in El-Sheikh Zaid arrested two men suspected of operating the network, seizing equipment, credit cards, and uncovering a shell company in the UAE that allegedly laundered over $6.2 million in ad revenue.
Narrative Projects
Up the Creek
The Crooked Grove
In 2059, two estranged childhood friends return to their collapsing hometown for the funeral of a teammate, only to find the poisoned land mirrors their own fractured bond. As gasoline fuels a broken America and fossil-fuel cults rise from the ashes of government, their grief curdles into accusation and violence at the polluted creek where their friendship began. A dystopian drama of memory, betrayal, and the quiet end of a world
The Crooked Grove
The Crooked Grove
In the aftermath of a self-imposed exile, a fading tech executive emerges into a society overtaken by AI and human-machine hybrids in the year 2037. Drawn back to a twisted grove from his childhood — a place where time and memory fracture — he and a wary waitress unravel the origins of a digital regime that has hollowed out humanity.
The Call of the Lune
In rural Vermont, grieving son Oscar inherits his mother’s cottage and begins nightly walks under an unnervingly still moon. There he encounters Lune—a spectral muse whose voice blends loon’s cry, moonlight, and madness—drawing him into a spiral where grief and obsession blur. A psychological horror about silence, memory, and the haunting persistence of feminine power
He Carved the Land
In 1896, legendary frontiersman Jedediah Rivers sets out to map the unforgiving Sierra Nevada, carving his name into the wilderness through blood and sacrifice. Narrated years later by his son Morgan, the story unravels the myth of heroism to reveal the cost of conquest—on people, land, and memory. A historical neo-western, it examines how legacies are forged in silence as much as in triumph
Red in the Marshlands
Delaware, 1955: a small coastal town choked by marshland and paranoia finds its water poisoned, its faith tested, and its secrets clawing to the surface. Detective Hollis Grackle and exiled investigator Morgan Rivers—two men broken by grief and war—uncover corruption and ecological collapse buried beneath church steeples and civic pride. A folk horror noir where truth and survival rarely align
Plastic Flamingoes
Florida, 1967: in a decaying beachside motel littered with sun-bleached flamingoes and broken promises, Morgan Rivers and Hollis Grackle cross paths once more. Twelve years after their last case destroyed them, the two men circle each other amid conspiracies, cults, and vanishing girls. A hallucinatory neo-noir, the film peels back America’s pastel façade to reveal the rot beneath the dream
Under Neon Lights
Down and Out in Paradise
The Brenner Diaries
Under Neon Lights is a stylized period drama set in post-war Japan, following an American drifter who takes refuge inside the crumbling Osaka Stadium. Amidst the city’s uneasy reconstruction, he navigates the clash between tradition and Western influence, finding unlikely kinship with locals who haunt the stadium’s underbelly—black market hustlers, disillusioned veterans, and artists searching for meaning in ruin. As neon signs flicker over a fractured city, his story becomes one of survival, reinvention, and the blurred line between belonging and exile.
The Brenner Diaries
Down and Out in Paradise
The Brenner Diaries
The Brenner Diaries is set in a frozen Minnesota mining town, two young men — Eero Lockwood and Thatcher Rook — uncover an Austrian immigrant’s diary pointing to a forgotten Cold War tunnel system hidden beneath the Iron Range. The map in the diary matches the layout of Vienna’s Third Man tunnels, revealing a 1940s secret smuggled across the world. As Eero follows the clues from Minnesota’s gangster caves and missile silos to the undercity of Vienna, he becomes the unlikely key to unlocking a mystery someone has waited decades to reclaim.
Down and Out in Paradise
Down and Out in Paradise
BlackBart: Ghost of the Sierras
Down and Out in Paradise is a cinematic portrait of Anthony Bourdain—chef, traveler, writer, and restless seeker. Based on the acclaimed biography, the film traces Bourdain’s unlikely rise from the kitchens of New York to global icon, while delving into the contradictions that defined him: a man who celebrated the joy of food and culture yet wrestled with profound inner turmoil. Moving through kitchens, back alleys, bustling markets, and quiet hotel rooms, the film is both a celebration of Bourdain’s fearless curiosity and an unflinching look at the costs of living without limits.
BlackBart: Ghost of the Sierras
BlackBart: Ghost of the Sierras
BlackBart: Ghost of the Sierras
A Union veteran turned gentleman outlaw haunts the forests and mountain passes of 1870s California, pulling off poetic, bloodless stagecoach robberies — and then vanishing without a trace. Black Bart: The Ghost of the Sierras investigates the life, myth, and mysterious disappearance of Charles E. Boles, America’s most enigmatic highwayman. Between 1875 and 1883, he robbed nearly 30 Wells Fargo stagecoaches in Northern California and Southern Oregon. He never fired a shot. Never harmed a driver or passenger. Wore a long linen duster, a flour-sack mask, and carried an unloaded shotgun. He sometimes left poems at the scene — verses mocking Wells Fargo, extolling solitude, and cryptically hinting at his grievances.