Marvelous Creatures is a documentary about the myths, cultural constructs and psychological underpinnings of that which we call Monsters. Monsters embody our deepest anxieties and vulnerabilities and have existed in human society from our earliest days. The artists and philosophers who are inspired by the history of monsters consider beasts, demons, freaks, and fiends as symbolic expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior.
Production of the film began in 2024, with interviews of Riva Lehrer, a renown Chicago artist is best known for representations of people whose physical embodiment, sexuality, or gender identity have long been stigmatized, Stephen Asma, Columbia College professor of Philosophy, who has written and spoken widely on the history of monsters and Jeffrey Cohen, who wrote one of the formative essays on Monster Theory.
In the Fall of 2025, we went to the Festival of Monsters in Santa Cruz, California, where we interviewed a wide range of monster scholars, including Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Michael Chemers, the founder of the Center for Monster Studies, David Livingston Smith and Analola Santana.
Post production on the movie will begin soon; we are aiming for a 2027 release of the finished documentary.