“One of my all time favourite movies and one of the greatest sci-fi films ever”
Mark Kermode
Academy Award nominee Bruce Dern stars in Silent Running, a sci-fi classic that journeys beyond the imagination.
Synopsis:
Botanist Freeman Lowell (Dern) has spent eight years aboard the space freighter Valley Forge preserving the only botanical specimens left from Earth under huge geodesic domes. When he receives orders to destroy the project and return home, Lowell rebels and hijacks the freighter, while plunging the craft into the gaseous rings of Saturn. From that moment on, he has only the trees, the gardens and two “Drone” robots, Huey and Dewey, to keep him company on his greatest adventure of all.
This was the directorial debut of Douglas Trumbull who is credited with having devised or contributed to the special photographic effects on Stanley Kubrick’s ground breaking 2001: A Space Odyssey, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, to name just a few.
The screenplay was written by Deric Washburn and Michael Cimino (who later collaborated on The Deer Hunter) and Steven Bochco (Hill Street Blues). The soundtrack was written by multiple Grammy Award winner Peter Schickele. It contains two songs written by Schickele and Diane Lampert which were performed by Joan Baez.
Trumbull has been nominated for three Oscars (for his work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Blade Runner). He won an Academy Scientific and Engineering Award in 1993 for the development of the Showscan Camera System – a revolutionary 65mm film format shot at 60 frames per second. He is credited with developing several technologies for IMAX. And he earned a lifetime achievement
Oscar in 2012.
Bruce Dern was 36 years old when Silent Running was released in 1972. He is still going strong having starred in Monster (2003), The Hateful Eight (2015), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and The Artist’s Wife released this year.
SILENT RUNNING is out now on DVD from Fabulous Films.
Extras: Theatrical Trailer. Reversible Sleeve with new art by Chris Thornley.
