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Lethbridge may not be a filmmaking mecca yet, but there are a lot of people who call the city home who make their own professional movies.
With the University of Lethbridge Film Festival coming up on March 31, there will be an excellent opportunity to see some of our budding filmmakers’ works.
Aaron Kurmey and Rambunxious Skeeter Productions are just one of them.
They have been focusing on getting their action film “Hoodoo VooDoo” in the public eye by submitting it to numerous film festivals.
But while he was coping with mailboxes full of rejection letters from festivals about “Hoodoo Voodoo,” Kurmey got a call out of the blue “from a weird phone number in Los Angeles,” giving him the opportunity to be interviewed for an NBC Los Angeles TV show “Action On Film,” based around the Action On Film International Film Festival, for which he had submitted the group’s short film “High School Brawl.”
“I was taking a nap and the phone rang, and they said they wanted to interview me. So they flew me out to Los Angeles and put me up for the night. They asked me a lot of standard questions, like who were you influenced by and where did the concept come from,” he said.
He admitted he had been focusing so much energy on promoting “Hoodoo Voodoo,” that he’d forgotten about “High School Brawl,” which is an about five-minute-long fight scene free of dialogue between a man and a group of school uniform-clad high school toughs, who end up getting beaten down, by a man who turns out to be their martial arts-trained teacher. Most of the cast of that film also appear in “Hoodoo Voodoo.”
“They wanted to feature 40 of the best films from the festival. And we were up against submissions from some really big film schools, UBC, NYU, the American Film Institute,” he said.
“They saw it and said it was one of their favourite films, which is crazy, because I don‘t like it too much,” he said.
The TV show airs on Saturday nights following Saturday Night Live. Kurmey’s segment won’t be televised until near the end of the season, on May 14.
He said they didn’t say why they liked the film so much. Maybe because of the quirky concept or the 40 minutes of bonus features for the five-minute film. “High School Brawl” won at the University of Lethbridge Film Festival last year.
Just after an interview about the local filmmaking scene, centring on the difficulty of getting into film festivals, Kurmey received an email saying not only did the work get accepted into the Canada International Film Festival in Vancouver, but it received an award of excellence for it as well. He will be going to Vancouver to receive the award April 3.
“Hoodoo Voodoo” is a full-length action comedy, which Kurmey compared to the “Evil Dead” movie.
“I was pretty surprised since we haven’t been having much luck with festivals. We were chosen as one of 28 films to play out of hundreds of entrants from 30 different countries,” Kurmey said.
He doesn’t think there is anything other than prestige if the film wins.
Also entering the university’s film festival is Gianna Magliocco, who goes by her director’s name Gianna Isabella, has entered her second film “Dilemma,” in this year’s festival.
She said she learned a lot from making her short film.
“I learned about budgeting, to set some money aside for marketing the film as well as just the production and post production,” she said.
A couple successful fundraising events as well as her generous brother helped.
“There are a lot of good, talented people making films here,” said the recent graduate of the University of Lethbridge’s new media program.
Isabella said the local filmmakers are very close knit group.
“We share a lot of tips and information with each other. We’ll phone and text about things like getting funding and ways to shoot. We’ll talk about everything, ” she continued.
An example of that helping attitude is apparent when Isabella appears as an extra in Kurmey’s new short film “Overture,” which will be a teaser for their next big science fiction film, though she’d rather be behind the camera than in front of it.
“I don’t think I’d make a great actor. I’m a little camera shy. I don’t mind being on screen for a few seconds, but we have really, really talented actors here.”
She’s glad the local filmmakers work so well together.
“We have two different styles. Aaron makes awesome action adventure films, while I make dramas. We help each other.”
Isabella is already hard at work on her next picture — a half-hour long movie called “To Free My Soul” about “a girl who goes to a psychologist, but not everything is as it seems.” It will also be the first film under the banner of her new film production company “Deadline Media.” Filming will begin this summer with the four cast members. The hope is to release the work this fall.
She wrote the story and Daniel Howard wrote the screenplay.
“I made some mistakes with ‘Dilemma’ and learned from them. And I will probably make more with this one. Hopefully the next one will be better,” she continued.
In the meantime, she is looking forward to the university film festival. She has never entered before, though she has attended four of the past five.
“It’s really great to see what the others have been working on. You can have two people sitting in the same class but they come up with two different films. I think that’s really amazing,” she said.
Festivals such as this serve as a terrific promotional tool. It’s a common misconception that making the movie is what requires all the work. Kurmey said the filming is only hafl the battle. Promoting it and getting it out to people is a full-time job.
“A lot of people think if they make a movie, somebody will buy it and that’s it. But it isn’t.”
One of the people who helps with film screenings is Karla Carcamo, who has assisted with screenings of independent films at places at the Tongue N Groove and through The SAAG Cinema. She is trying to do similar screening at the NAAG gallery at 255 12 St. N.
The first SAAG Cinema of the season takes place March 30 at the Tongue N Groove, featuring the dark documentary “Marwencol.” SAAG Cinema will take place once a month on the last Wednesday of each month
But Carcamo would like to screen local films even earlier.
“We want to start screening films at the NAAG but these are guerilla screenings,” she said.
The last one was a documentary about underground anarchist British punk band Crass’s commune. They spread the word through social media such as Facebook and Twitter and are testing the water as to what sort of films Lethbridge audiences respond.
She is looking forward to the new SAAG cinema series, which will bring in very reputable and critically acclaimed films that have been screened at festivals such as the Toronto International Film festival.
“It’s all about the Internet. I spend a lot of time researching movies. We look for films that have a buzz around them; if there’s a buzz, chances are there will be an audience,” she said.
“And I look for something that is new and refreshing, something that has fully directed characters and a story and a well-produced film.”
Lethbridge is home to a number of local film festivals, including The International Film Festival and Banff Mountain Film Festival at the library downtown as well as specialty groups such as CineMAGINE.
“We have all of these great people who are into films and the Movie Mill which isn’t used as much as it could be,” Carcamo continued.
“But you have to be in the know, so I’m trying to find some sort of network for that.”
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