World Premiere Date Set for Sensual Drama Feature Film

In Corpore is the second ambitious feature film to be co-produced and co-directed by Ivan Malekin and Sarah Jayne Portelli and will be available throughout Australia on the Lido At Home streaming service from November 26th, with pre-sales opening on November 19th.

Entirely improvised, sensual, contemporary, and anchored by powerful performances by new talent from Berlin, Malta, Australia and New York In Corpore tells the stories of four separate relationships, each varied in their labels, each unfolding in different parts of the world. 

In Melbourne the polyamorous Julia strays from her monogamous marriage; in Malta Anna hides a secret from her husband Manny; in Berlin sugar baby Milana alienates her real life lover Rosalie, and in New York Julia faces the consequences of her affair.

The film explores the nature of commitment and the idea of sacrificing personal desires at the altar of love – is it selfish to follow the desires of the body and the soul or is this the only path to fulfilment? 

Even if it means hurting the one you love? 

View the trailer for In Corpore go to the films official page. 

If you would like to review the film, or to interview the cast and crew, contact Ivan Malekin and Sarah Jayne directly though this website.

Psychological Drama Wraps after Second Week of Production

If week one of filming Machination was a whirlwind, then week two was a hurricane with over 2kgs of worms, blood, moody neon lights, night shoots, early mornings finales and some wicked acting. But damn straight we had the best sleep deprived time of our lives in the process and came out the other end with a treasured film experience to add to our already unforgettable 2020.

Machination took four months of our lives to get from the outline writing to the wrap and we did it all with a minimal crew of no more than six on larger days and just a key cast of four people and had Maltese actor Steffi Thake featuring in 99% of the full-length feature. For those interested in our filmmaking process read how Ivan’s article From Writing to Wrap: Making a Feature in Four Months here.

After 10 days of filming Machination, we wrapped at Selmun Bay around 7am! Picture: Creative Creep Brand

Steffi may have had most of the screen time since the film is about her character Maria and her downward spiral as she deals with mental illness and her past demons during a global pandemic, but Steffi handled it like a champion. The lead actors performance was moving and sad to watch, at times her situation and reaction to what was happening around her was relatable, other times the absurdity of the situation bordered on dark humour.

So now Machination is now in the ‘to edit’ bucket, a task that Ivan Malekin will start taking on in the coming week, while also editing our documentary Cats of Malta simultaneously.

If you want to know more about Machination go to the films official page here and join our Creatively Connected Newsletter for news about the film exclusively here.

Machination Week 1 Done

Our latest feature Machination has just wrapped Week one of production. It’s a two week shoot, but we now have a week off to recover and rest for a moment before planning and prep begins for Production Week two. Machination is about a woman battling the monsters in her head during a global pandemic and stars Steffi Thake as Maria. If the first weeks rushes are anything to go by, it will be a very powerful performance.

We are thrilled with the results so far and grateful to the small but dedicated team helping us to make this film happen during a real pandemic here in Malta, part of the worldly global pandemic which inspired the writing of the Machination story. It may seem like a timely film, but it’s story more than what you see on the surface - it’s story about a woman battling mental illness, facing here past demons and how the two meet to break the human spirit.

Mental illness is a topic we need to talk more openly about as the monsters in people’s minds can be life threatening, and any event that is large and out of our control, spurred on by heightened media can feed anxiety and trigger symptoms for a sufferer. Sometimes with devastating results.

The beautiful thing about working so closely with Steffi in the improvised process from conception stage, from the very first story outline (that was more focused on the absurdity of conspiracy theories and the media hype surrounding such theorists views which emerged through the pandemic here in Malta), is that together, through research and advice from psychological professionals, the story of Maria and the monsters she is battling became more of the character piece we are interested in and can relate to. A big step away from the genre horror film we had originally envisioned, which we honestly were not sure we wanted to make.

The Machination we are filming now is relatable, it could happen to you or me and it’s a character study of a woman who, throughout a pandemic outbreak is being pushed to her mental limit due to the reality she has created in her mind.

Lockdown Inspires Filmmaking

It’s a crazy time, I don’t have to tell you that, we are all living through this COVID-19 pandemic hell and some of us are having a hard time more than others due to factors in our lives which existed before this hit. Some of us now are feeling the hardship suddenly wash over us as we loose our jobs, our income, our physical connection to others and our sanity.

To keep us going in lockdown and self quarantine we have been writing screenplays, developing ideas and shooting films. These films are short films which fit under our Life Improvised micro film banner and shot mostly in one location, with Sarah Jayne as the lead and Ivan Malekin as DOP.

The first one is called Hiding and is about a woman becoming more and more paranoid about the rise of COVID-19. She puts herself in self-quarantine as she battles her fear.

The second micro-short is called Hoping, and is a reflective look at our ‘new normal’ with hope for the days ahead.

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive these micro-shorts as soon as they are ready for release.

Australian Teaser Trailer exclusive for Polyamory and Relationship Drama Feature →

Thanks to CInema Australia for once again supporting our work, this time by sharing the teaser trailer for our improvised feature film In Corpore, and matching it with an informative article.

In Corpore, an improvised feature film exploring polyamory and relationship dramas will be released this year, with a cinema screening happening in New York mid-July.

Read the full article here, with a link to the teaser, or just watch the trailer on our Vimeo account here.

We would love to share more news with you about this film, so subscribe to our NPG newsletter for updates here. 

Improvised Micro Budget Indie Feature Film available on Blu-ray format →

Happy New Year! We hope you had a safe and memorable NYE and are ready to tackle 2020.

We are pleased to announce that our improvised micro budget feature film Friends, Foes & Fireworks is now available worldwide on Blu-ray via Amazon. Grab your own collector’s copy and watch with your friends, champagne in hand.

Featuring behind the scenes as well as deleted scenes, all in glorious HD, Friends, Foes & Fireworks is the ultimate New Year’s Eve film, filmed completely in a single night on New Year’s Eve without a script. How many films can say that?

Purchase your copy here now!

LesFlicks Love

Through our newsletters, particularly in reference to our feature In Corpore, we have harped on about the importance of finding a niche for your film and building an audience from the early stages of pre-production. We have been working on doing just this and learning 'how-to' for most of 2019. 

By having In Corpore connecting with and following suitable accounts on Instagram, we piqued the interest of one account – LesFlicks. And now In Corpore is listed on LesFlicks film database.

LesFlicks is Europe's first dedicated lesbian film platform that supports and lists short and features films about lesbian and bisexual couples on their website, and they also use their online platform to distribute these films. 

We have not signed In Corpore up for distribution, as we are still in the early stages of plotting our distribution map for the film, but having it listed on LesFlicks definitely puts our film in front of the right audience.

Check out LesFlicks here.

CBI Workshop in Basel

On Wednesday we will be jetting off to Basel, Switzerland to fill two director places as part of Robert Marchand's Character Based Improvisation Workshops, which take place all over the globe.

Lucky for us we were funded by the Arts Council Malta though the Professional Development Grant, which is covering a majority of the costs associated with this trip, thus allowing us to learn more improvised techniques for working with actors and developing scenes. We know this is going to be beneficial for us as the way Robert teaches is based on director Mike Leigh's method, which differ from our own process, so we excited about the possibly of utilising parts of what we learn when we direct To Hold the Moon.

Originally we were meant to be attending the workshop early this month in Berlin, but the German section of the tour never went ahead. Thus the offer to attend the Basel workshop from October 31st until November 5th was put on the table. As much as we were looking forward to returning to hip Berlin for a second time this year, we are looking even more forward to discovering a new country and meeting a new group of actors and directors committed to improvisation, plus learning from one of the top teachers of improv in the world, Robert Marchand.

You can find out more about the CBI workshops and Robert as a teacher through his website.

Our Lady in Netherlands

Some good news this month. Our first micro-short in the Life Improvised series has been selected into the MoziMotion Film Festival in the Netherlands, which runs from October 5th-13th. The improvised micro short stars local actor Marysia S. Peres as a woman waiting for her date at a Maltese festa, and was shot in Naxxar, right in the middle of the celebrations, marching bands, fireworks, spectacle. A lot of fun!

Summer Poster launch

Here it is, a first look at the second character poster for the feature film To Hold The Moon we are currently developing.

This is the character poster for Summer Alba, played by Australian actor Asleen Mauthoor, who is now based in London.

In the film, aspiring actor and playwright Summer is struggling in her career, with her one-woman theatre show failing to find an audience in London. So in an attempt to retreat into the arms of her lover, take her mind off work, and find herself again Summer spontaneously flies to Malta to join her partner Lucinda, an up-and-coming movie actor who is deep in pre-production for a cult-hit zombie film.

Summer, naive to the bad timing, clings to Lucinda and wants to know the future of their relationship, reaching for a way to rekindle the spark the pair once shared. Summer needs to deal with personal feelings of failure, lack of life direction, and faltering communication with Lucinda. But Summer's efforts to mend the cracked relationship prove more complicated than anticipated, and a heated new friendship in Malta confuses Summer further, leading her to new passions and heartaches, and, ultimately, new perspectives.

To learn more about To Hold the Moon visit the website here and sign up to the official film newsletter to stay updated with the behind the scenes news.

The poster was designed by Kathy Kennedy with photography by Kristian Pirotta and make-up by Mirjana Laferlita. We love it and hope you do too. If you do, share it around.

This was a lot of fun. For those based in Malta who have not made the trip across to the sister island of Gozo for the festival, we say do it!

On Saturday 24th after a late afternoon swim at Ramla Bay, followed by cave exploring in Nadur and an alfresco seafood dinner on a clifftop, we headed off to the Cittadella, where we enjoyed watching locally produced feature film Limestone Cowboy. It was past midnight when we returned to our AirBnb to rest so that we could wake early to prep for our Sunday morning Improvised Filmmaking Workshop for Teenagers, held at the same venue.

This is our third year in attendance and each year we are very happy that we made the trip down from Malta to watch films and be welcomed by really passionate and enthusiastic people who love film as much as we do.

And to teach improvised filmmaking, the niche style we love so much, to young students intrigued by the 'no script' process we developed was an absolute blessing. We played games, filmed scenes, and went over everything from different improvisation styles to developing ideas to filming without a script and more. A big thank you to Gozo Film Festival, its volunteers, and festival director Federico Chini.

We'll be back next year. But we'll be teaching another improvised workshop very, very soon.