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.

Mirror of Filth on Amazon Prime

Our short film Mirror of Filth is now available to watch on Amazon Prime. An erotic drama produced in 2014 and co-directed by Ivan Malekin and Jamie Wilson, MoF tells the gritty of story of a man named Chris searching for connection in a world of filth and sex. But Chris’ habits and desires are slowly breaking him, one woman at a time.

With a powerful lead performance from Jamie Wilson as Chris and great support from Whitney Duff from our feature Friends, Foes & Fireworks, plus Simone Oula and Sally Dean, Mirror of Filth is a film we are proud of and one that has never been widely released previously.

Watch Mirror of Filth on Amazon here. Leave a review, send us feedback, enjoy the film.

Rise of the Filmtrepreneur

Friends, Foes & Fireworks is featured in the new book Rise of the Filmtrepreneur by Alex Ferrari of Indie Film Hustle fame. We met Alex in 2018 at the American Film Market and he helped us create and launch our Udemy course based on Making a Feature in 24hrs.

And here we are today, a case study in making films quickly ingrained in print. Thank you Alex.

Buy the book, it's very good. Watch Friends, Foes & Fireworks. Take the course on Udemy. And keep creating!

Full Cast for Machination

The full cast for Machination is now set, our improvised psychological drama filming this August in Malta. Steffi Thake is playing the lead role of Maria and she is joined by Rambert Attard as her brother Yorgen, Andrew Bonello as the overbearing landlord Peter, with Seán James Sutton rounding out the cast as her intrusive boss Ian. It is a talented cast, all based in Malta, but with international experience, and we can’t wait to roll cameras next month!

Life Improvised: Hoping

Last month we finished Life Improvised: Hiding, a bleak look at the fear and anxiety caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, filmed during lockdown. But now we are proud to share a more optimistic reflection on the pandemic in Life Improvised: Hoping. Again, it stars Sarah Jayne with Ivan Malekin the only crew, but this time though we tackle fear and uncertainty we also want to present a message of hope and resilience. Life goes on and we can make the best of a bad situation if we embrace the lessons that can be learnt. 

Machination Casting

Pre-production is underway for our new feature Machination, an improvised psychological horror about a germaphobic woman struggling to cope in isolation as a pandemic sweeps the world, forcing her to confront dark conspiracies and sinister monsters. We are pleased to announce we have cast talented local actress Steffi Thake in the lead role of Maria.

For the last 10 years, Steffi has been acting in film, TV and theatre. She began with Christmas pantomimes and gradually made a name for herself in Malta with notable titles under her belt as Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, The Vagina Monologues, and Image of an Unkown Young Woman. In 2013 she was awarded Best Actress at the MADC's One Act Play Festival for her performance in Murder Play.

Steffi gravitated towards film, training specifically in film acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art as well as Identity School of Acting. She has featured in Michael Bay's 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, Chris Zarb's Do Re Mi Fa, and starred in Take2's pilot Never After and, most recently, Stephanie Sant's Camilla. 

Life Improvised: Hiding

We filmed a couple of micro-shorts as part of our Life Improvised series while in lockdown. This is the first, Hiding, about a woman in isolation struggling to cope with her mounting fear.

Regular Nexus director Sarah Jayne takes on the starring role in this film inspired by a feature we are developing called Machination about a woman slowly breaking down during the pandemic. One actor, Ivan on camera and directing, our smallest micro-short yet, but one we enjoyed making and which allowed us to exercise our creativity despite restrictions. Watch below.

The Cat's out of the Bag

Unbeknown to us we scored some media attention for the third time this year from Guide Me Malta, the film they focused on was our local cat lovers documentary Cats of Malta.

While we were conversing with talented Maltese street artist Matthew Pandolfino we were being watched, and so was the art. Matthew’s feline sculpture is famous on Instagram, well known by the locals and is hard to miss when driving along Sliema’s promenade. She sits proudly on a toilet block, looking out above Independence Garden (also known as Cat Park).

Some say that the sculpture is a cat god, looking out for the cats in the garden, but whatever powerful being she is, we were lucky enough to contact Matthew about talking to us on camera just as he was giving her a fresh coat of paint.

We visited Matthew on three separate occasions while the sculpture went from a coloured abstract design to the new luna theme. We can’t wait to put the edit for this section of the doco together and tell the story!

Check out both articles relating to Cats of Malta and Matthew’s cat overhaul in these articles from May 9th and May 17th.

Cats of Malta Begins Production

Production has began on our feature documentary Cats of Malta about the many stray cats of the island and the people who care for them. Our first interview was with Matthew Pandalfino as he re-painted his giant cat sculpture in Sliema, a popular tourist attraction, and we were there to document the process and learn more about why cats are so beloved in Malta. We have more interviews lined up so stay tuned to our website for updates and adorable pictures of cats.

And if you are in Malta and know a cat feeder with an interesting story to tell, we want to speak to them. Get in touch with us. 

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. 

EUROPEAN IMPROVISED LESBIAN FEATURE FILM MALTESE EXCLUSIVE →

It was very fitting that To Hold the Moon, a film about two Aussie women who travel to Malta for two very different reasons should end up being the feature for an article on Guide Me Malta. Not only that, the local news and travel site also shared a link to the exclusive teaser trailer of the European Improvised lesbian feature film, along with the poster. Click here to read the article.

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

Cry Me a River

Though this holiday period is a time for family and friends it can also be a difficult period. Sometimes, even when we are surrounded by people, we suffer alone. But the world still goes on.

Our latest Life Improvised micro-short Cry me a River captures that isolation and pain, dealing with one woman's sadness and grief in a public space. It's our shortest micro-short yet at 2 minutes. Filmed in Berlin, drafted and organised in a couple of days, and with additional extras (and dogs) approached to star in the film on the spot. Starring Kelsey Giles in a terrific performance, who you will also see in our feature film In Corpore in the near future. Watch below.

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.

YouthMundus in November

Our educational film Daughter has been invited to be part of YouthMundus - A New Global Content & Music Festival Initiative for Youth, run and organised by a team of dedicated women who own and operate an international entertainment and media company, Inner Voice Artists (IVA).

Mid September, director Sarah Jayne and producer/ editor Ivan Malekin spoke with the Iva’s Founder & CEO Ina Petersen and Iva’s Head of PR Dijana Stupar, via a video chat in order for the IVA team to understand the background of the film and the final outcome we want for Daughter.

The chat was a success, with our goals for Daughter and IVA’s aligning perfectly - to use film to spread the message of how toxic violence against women and victim blaming is within our communities through the voice of today’s youth.

The first festival edition of YouthMundus runs from 14th to 17th November, 2019 at EX CASERMA GUIDO RENI in Rome, Italy, with Daughter screening in the humanity section of the festival, November 17th from 3.45pm, Short Film Screenings 6.

Tickets on sale now!

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.

Short Film XChange Released

Shot in our beautiful home town of Melbourne and completely improvised, XChange tells the story of Yvette (Vanessa De Largie), a powerful business executive who is strung out from the demands of her high pressured position that leaves her in desperate need of sexual relief.

Yvette knows that money can buy most things, but after an exchange with a charming escort (Frank Fazio), she will discover that what she really needs cannot be bought. 

WARNING - NSFW. Contains Nudity & Language.

This is our third micro short in the Life Improvised series, a collection of stories which focus on relationships, human interaction, and the small moments that make up life. All films are completely improvised.

And we were thrilled to work with actor, writer, and sex columnist Vanessa de Largie for the first time, who put on a terrific lead performance as Yvette, backed by Frank Fazio from In Corpore as the charming Escort. It was a reunion with some of our key crew from Melbourne too, including Stephen Ramplin from Friends, Foes & Fireworks as the DOP, and yet another collaboration with Gerard Mack, our go-to sound guru.

Hope you enjoy XChange. Be sure to share it around.