Firelight (1964 film)
| Firelight | |
|---|---|
Newspaper advertisement | |
| Directed by | Steven Spielberg |
| Written by | Steven Spielberg |
| Produced by | Arnold Spielberg Leah Spielberg |
| Starring | Clark Lohr Carolyn Owen |
| Cinematography | Steven Spielberg |
| Edited by | Steven Spielberg (uncredited) |
| Music by | Steven Spielberg (composer) Arcadia High School Band (performer) |
Production company | American Artist Productions |
| Distributed by | Phoenix Theatre |
Release date |
|
Running time | 135 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Budget | $500 |
| Box office | $501 |
Firelight is a 1964 science fiction film written and directed by American filmmaker Steven Spielberg at the age of 17. The film is Spielberg's first feature-length, at 135 minutes, and was filmed on weekends over the course of a year. Firelight was made on a budget of $500 (equivalent to $5,069 in 2024) and was shown at his local cinema in Phoenix, Arizona.
The film follows a mysterious alien encounter and invasion; Spielberg would return to the subject with Firelight as inspiration for his third major film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977.: 24 Only three minutes and forty seconds of footage from Firelight has been made public, and very little of it survives. Spielberg has called it "one of the five worst films ever made".