Malta is the only country in the EU where a woman will be arrested for having an abortion. Here, the path to a legal abortion is fraught with barriers: it demands a consensus from not one, but three separate doctors, all agreeing that abortion is the sole measure to save her life. Abortion is illegal even in cases of rape and incest, making Malta one of the strictest anti-abortion nations in the world.
So when No Woman is an Island was invited to screen in front of the EU Parliament in a bid to help change Maltese law, I was honoured. To screen in Parliament, where MPs advocate, deliberate, and enact laws to foster positive change across all member states, including Malta ... Well, that was precisely one of the motivations driving my documentary work.
Read MoreIn 2019 we jumped into developing our biggest feature film ever, To Hold the Moon, a LGBTQ drama set in Malta budgeted at €225,000. It takes two characters established in Friends, Foes & Fireworks, aspiring actors Summer and Lucinda, and explores their relationship two years later. Lucinda is dealing with new found fame as an actor and sexual abuse in the industry while Summer is ignored by the same industry and struggling to find work. Afraid their relationship is stagnating, Summer follows Lucinda to a film shoot in Malta and attempts to revitalize their relationship, but both women need to face harsh truths about their love and life.
We filmed a concept teaser with Whitney Duff and Asleen Mauthoor while we were visiting Melbourne that year, created a poster for the production, then went back to Malta with pitch materials in hand, all set to find funding for the film and go into production ASAP.
Read MoreIn 2022 we have been paying attention to an aspect of film distribution we have largely ignored for several years beforehand: film festivals.
We have had rejections of course. With many festivals receiving thousands of entries, there will always be rejections. But we have also found some success. Machination has picked up several awards at film festivals for Acting, Directing, and Sound Design. Cats of Malta has been selected for the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, New York Cat Festival, and other festivals we cannot reveal quite yet. Our latest Life Improvised film, The Dance, screened at Kinemastik International Short Film Festival in Malta last night.
But this handful of success has come at a cost of almost $1000USD so far in festival submission fees. Could this money have been better spent elsewhere? Like running Facebook ads for the release of Machination? Have we gotten enough return for our funds? In short: are film festivals worth the cost and effort?
Read MoreLast week I sent off a private screener of Cats of Malta to our Kickstarter backers. The next day I received a reply from an actor/filmmaker I knew from my past life working out of Studio 106 in St Kilda. Katrina asked me about our improvised process of filmmaking, how we make films, and if she could see an example of my favorite improvised NPG film.
This request got me thinking and sent me down a rabbit hole of reminiscing about our improvised work and how we started producing and shooting films using this unique method. All this thinking led me to Tubi TV and getting lost within the first twenty minutes of Friends, Foes & Fireworks – the first improvised film Ivan and I produced and directed, plus shot in a single night.
Within the body of the email reply to Katrina I pasted the Tubi TV link to Friends, Foes & Fireworks and filled the rest of the blank space with our improvisation inspirations, directors and films we admire – one of which is Mike Leigh. His name led me to thinking about the whole improvisation journey and business transition which NPG has gone through since making Friends, Foes & Fireworks in 2017. Again this led to yet another fond memory – the five days Ivan and I spent in Basel during 2019 taking part in the Character Based Improvisation (CBI) workshop Robert Marchand teaches.
I also mentioned the CBI workshop to Katrina, then I hit ‘send’. Sitting at my desk I realized it's been a few years since Basel, and that realization brought on some wonderful memories.
Read MoreThe concept of the New Year resolution started around 4000 years ago with the agricultural Babylonians. During their ancient annual Akitu festival, which included crop harvesting and appointing a new king, the Babylonians focused on pleasing their gods. Over twelve days they made promises to their gods that they would pay debts and return borrowed tools. Keeping this promise would gain them favoritism from the Gods in the coming year.
Other cultures adopted a similar belief around New Year's resolutions. In ancient Rome 46 B.C, the new calendar was introduced by Emperor Julius Caesar, making January 1st the start of the year. Caesar named the month after the two faced God Janus. Similar to the Babylonians, the Romans offered sacrifice and made promises to Janus to show good behavior in the new year.
UNDER PRESSURE
It’s these traditions that we have to thank for the reason most of us feel the pressure around mid-December to be better versions of ourselves in many aspects of our lives once January 1st rolls around.
Which brings us to today. Why does our society still hold on to variations of these ancient traditions?
Read MoreI have been thinking of writing this article for a long time now. It is an awkward, potentially controversial topic, especially with what is going on with film crews around the world protesting set conditions and working hours and lack of pay. It’s about money. It’s about low rates. It’s about deferment, working for exposure, volunteering, using students on set, or any of the other short cuts producers use to indicate “no pay”. It’s about the perceived exploitation producers put cast and crew through to create movies. And the fact that everyone feels underpaid and is putting their hands in the air saying “please sir, can I have some more?”
Money, money, money.
And it is completely understandable. Everyone deserves to be paid properly for the hard work they do on set, for the years of training and experience they bring to their craft, for the skills in camera or sound or production design or acting they bring to each project.
Read MoreThe golden age of filmmaking in Hollywood set up an image of a producer being the person who calls the shots and says what goes and what doesn't – outsiders often or not have this image of a white, male, most likely middle-aged big shot, totally comfortable with demanding what he wants and getting it too. He is assertive, which is a kind way to say mean or bossy (when talking about men anyway), and everyone drops to their knees, scampering all over the studio to please him and meet his requests.
In the modern world, we still have these important producers, but the image of them has changed slightly, along with the way producers operate, and importantly what has also changed is how the people working below the producer respond to their demands.
Our generation is accepting of producers of any gender, religion, race and colour, but we are also aware of the power imbalance that comes ingrained in the hierarchy of the film industry. This was demonstrated by the much needed Me Too movement, and what followed for industries outside entertainment with the Time's Up movement. Both proved that you can't be simultaneously worshipped and an insensitive asshole that abuses the power that comes from your role.
Read MoreSome actors have a character they portrayed on the screen whose shadow they live in most of their lives. For Sean Connery and Roger Moore it was James Bond, Boris Karloff had Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi had Dracula and mine is Dace Decklan: Private Eye.
Who the hell is Dace Decklan: Private Eye, you might ask?
It all started as a twinkle in the eye of film director Ivan Malekin. How he ever came up with the concept of melding Magnum P.I and James Bond I will never know. Then again maybe I should just ask him? I just realised I never did.
Read MoreI've been in this indie filmmaking community for over a decade, and I’ve been directing since 2013, yet it always amazes me how there is always something more to learn in this industry as a director with each project.
This year I fell into directing my first documentary, Cats of Malta, and man did I learn a lot as I researched the topic and subjects that make up the Maltese cat community. Right now as we edit the project I'm becoming even more knowledgeable on how producing docos work, thanks to Google.
I have watched a few docos this year too, standouts being Tiger King, which showed me a lot about how to interview subjects and that true to life characters exist, you just have to find the interesting and sometimes kooky parts of their story. Another Netflix doco, High Score, was entertaining from start to finish. Even though I am not a gamer, High Score was so well put together as a series, each episode explaining a different shift in the industry, that even I as a novice on the subject was hooked.
One of the first things I learnt from the process of directing a doco is that I had to know what I could legally film. People in the background, peoples faces as they interacted with our interviewees on the street, and I will confess that I was reading about the legalities as we were filming.
Read MoreThere seems to be this mentality held by some creative people and even non creatives who are working the daily grind that being busy all the time means you are the most productive person on the planet. That your self-worth is somehow tied up with how damn busy you are all the damn time. The busier you are, the more packed your schedule is, the more proof there is that you are working much harder than your peers or colleagues. And this is what defines us as people.
I confess that I was one of these people around four years ago. I use past tense as now I'm more chilled and sometimes less productive than I have ever been. I still get stuff done but in healthy moderation. Even with my full time job, I get home and manage to smash out a couple of hours working on an investment deck or marketing for one of my films.
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