NEW YORK CITY — Grant Greenberg is the director behind The Pale Horseman, a western-themed fashion editorial film starring supermodel Joan Smalls and professional bull rider/real-life cowboy, Bonner Bolton.
The Pale Horseman coincides with Grant Greenberg’s editorial spread in The Impression’s Fall issue, which focuses on film’s influence on fashion. The film showcases stunning looks from Dior, Tom Ford, Marc Jacobs and J.W. Anderson’s Fall 2017 collections.
In a series of stylized, cinematic vignettes, Greenberg develops a tense erotic connection between Smalls and Bolton. Glances between the couple build to a tender intimacy.
The short film, which runs just over two minutes, was shot on location in Strawberry Mansion, a historic, inner-city neighborhood in north Philadelphia, where the African American community has kept horses for generations. These local horsemen are featured as extras in the film, and the location serves as a gritty backdrop.
“What excited me about this concept was taking fashion out of the studio and onto the street,” says Greenberg, who is represented in the US by production company Grand Large Inc. “Not the streets of New York City, which are ubiquitous in fashion editorials, but the seldom-seen streets of America. From there we were able to build a rich visual narrative open to interpretation.”
The video was shot using Arri’s Alexa and edited by Kate Owen at Whitehouse Post. The Mill’s Mikey Rossiter served as colorist. French-Moroccan singer Hindi Zahra heightens the piece’s sensual mood with her evocative rendition of Gershwin’s classic “The Man I Love”.