Starring Kate Jones, Lisa Saeboe, Louise Molesworth and Kevin Gilligan. Directed by Lisa Saeboe and Kate Jones.

Inspired by Þórdís, a Prophetess who dwelt at the base of the mountain Spákonufell (near a village called Skagaströnd on the Skagi peninsula in Iceleand), the filmmakers add the folklore creature known as a tilberi into the mix. We’re shown a woman creating the little monster by wrapping wool around a bone (in the legends this bone is usually a human rib) – and the wool is secured to the bone with twine. The woman goes to a (very artistic-looking) church to drink communion wine, which she dribbles into the mouth of the tilberi that is wedged firmly between her cleavage. Later we see the woman feeding her woolly familiar by using a dagger to make an incision in her inner thigh, allowing the worm-thing to drink her blood. Finally, after a local busybody villager discovers her cuddling the furry tilberi, we see the woman (and the tilberi) being burnt at the stake.

NIGHT OF THE TILBERI is a short film made by two former NYC School of Visual Arts graduates; artist/filmmaker/set designer Lisa Saeboe and painter/filmmaker/sculptor Kate Jones. It is a visually striking, artsy, quite brief film that has no dialogue, but it does boast an impressive analog synth score by Brooklyn-based producer/singer/multi-instrumentalist Rare DM. 

The film, broken up into mini-chapters titled Creation, Sacrament, Feeding, Surrender and Sacrifice, is an audiovisual art-piece, with costumes provided by the Museum of Prophecies, and impressive Icelandic landscape shots mixed with nudity. The imagery explores the archetype of the witch as an empowered feminine identity seen by wider society (as personified by the villager) as deviant, too sexual, and anti-establishment, deserving of capital punishment.

In Icelandic legends the tilberi, a creature sent out by its witch mistress to gather milk taken from other people’s sheep and cows, is commonly depicted as a small, long-bodied, fur-covered, legless worm-thing with a hairless semi-anthropomorphic face situated at both ends of its body. In this short the creature is, indeed, depicted as a furry, wormy critter (though with just one head), and the lil’ beast appears in many shots squeezed (in a rather phallic fashion) between the woman’s breasts. This tilberi-nestled-in-a-woman’s-cleavage detail is actually an established part of the tilberi folklore. At first, when smaller, the tilberi is shown to have a tiny head with feminine lips, and later, when it has grown larger, its head becomes gold-coloured and more skull-like.

The Icelandic TV movie TILBURY, released in 1987, follows most of the same lore, but presents viewers with a creature that is revealed to be a long-nosed, butter-vomiting man-like being masquerading as a British army officer called Major Tilbury! Of the two representations, I must say that I prefer the snaky/hairy/worm-like version of the tilberi seen here!