Staircases to Nowhere

The Shining was made at EMI-Elstree Studios in 1978-79, directed by Stanley Kubrick.

In 2013 we made an oral history about the making of the film, as told to us by ten interviewees from the film’s actual crew.  Our film, Staircases to Nowhere: Making Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ has been acclaimed as “the definitive retrospective on the making of a horror masterpiece”, and the BFI said it was “like being on set with Stanley Kubrick”. As flattering and kind as those accolades are, we defer to Vivian Kubrick’s work, which was actually on set. Our film is an oral history, and is therefore more of a retrospective study through interviews.

In 2026, this film has been revisited in a special new edition with five additional interviews added and a further twenty minutes of footage. This is not just the original documentary with extra interviews cut in, but a complete re-edit to better tell the true story of how The Shining was made by the people who were there.

It will be released on SVOD on The Criterion Channel and in the new 4K The Complete Kubrick box set by The Criterion Collection in North America. We are working out ways for the new edition to be available in other parts of the world — please be patient with us on that!

“Like being on set with Stanley Kubrick.” – British Film Institute

“The film is a treasure of impressively high calibre interviews with people closely associated with the film.” – FEEL Guide

“Might be the greatest documentary about ‘The Shining’ ever made” – Movies.com