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The artist casts himself alongside a real-life NRA sharpshooter in this wordless exploration of wilderness

Redoubt is a wordless outdoor movie-ballet inspired by the huntress myth of Diana, set in the forested wilderness of Idaho’s Sawtooth mountains and brought to us by artist and film-maker Matthew Barney, whose most famous work is probably his colossal five-film sequence, the Cremaster Cycle.

Cremaster was a headspinningly gigantic folie de grandeur spanning six hours in total, inspired by the interrelation of biology and creativity. Redoubt is a more modest two-and-a-quarter hours, part of an art installation including sculptures and engravings, originally commissioned by Yale University. Barney plays a hardy outdoorsman, an engraver who hikes around the wilderness, making etchings on an engraving plate; his redoubt appears to be a modest trailer which he shares with a woman (Kj Holmes), perhaps his wife or partner, who electroplates the resulting work in a chemical bath.

We might as well call it “Dances With Wolves”: Compared to the nightmarish vision multimedia id-tickler Matthew Barney created his epic, five-film “Cremaster Cycle” (which suggested Hieronymus Bosch by way of Busby Berkeley) and his shocking six-hour followup, “River of Fundament”, the art-world adulte terrible’s wilderness-set new feature feels downright conventional.

“Redoubt” runs a relatively bladder-friendly two hours and 15 minutes. It contains none of the upsetting bodily fluids or functions that have repulsed his past audiences. The film features Barney himself as a grizzled mountain-man artist identified only as the “Engraver,” and it follows a linear plot loosely inspired by the myth of Diana, goddess of the hunt (professional sharpshooter and self-described “30 Cal Gal” Anette Wachter), and Actaeon, the mortal trespasser whom she turned into a stag (that would be Barney’s character).

— and even they should be mollified by the end-credits claim that “Hunting scenes … were staged using special effects.

Comedy Dynamics has acquired Laura Madalinksi’s 2 In The Bush: A Love Story. The feature is slated for release through the Comedy Dynamics network in Fall 2019.

Written by Madalinski and Kelly Haas, the film follows Emily who, after losing her job, arrives home early from work to find her girlfriend in the throes of passion with someone else. In an instant, her entire life is turned upside down. Moving in with her best friend, Emily lands a new gig working for a dominatrix. When she falls for her new boss, and then her boss’s boyfriend, Emily must decide what risks are worth taking for love.

2 In The Bush: A Love Story was an official selection of the 2018 OutFest La, and played at numerous festivals including BFI Flare London Lgbtq+ Film Festival as well as NewFests, New York’s Lgbtq Film Festival.

The acquisition deal for 2 In The Bush was...