Lethbridge may not be a film making mecca yet, but there are a lot of people who make their own professional movies.
With the University of Lethbridge Film Festival coming up, March 31, there will be an excellent opportunity to see some of our budding film makers’ works.
Aaron Kurmey and Rambunxious Entertainment are just one of them.
They have been focussing 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 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 enthused adding he‘d been focussed so much on promoting “Hoodoo Voodoo,” that he’d forgotten about “High School Brawl,” which is a five some minute long fight scene, without any dialogue, between a man and a group of school uniform clad high school toughs, who end up getting beaten down by the man, who turns out to be their martial arts trained teacher. Most of the cast of that film are also 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 adding the show will be on Saturday nights following Saturday Night Live beginning March 12, though his segment won’t be until near the end of the season, on May 14.
He said they didn’t say why they liked it 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 film making scene, centering on the difficulty of getting into film festivals, Kurmey received an e-mail saying not only did they get accepted into the Canada International Film Festival in Vancouver, but that it received an award of excellence for it as well. They will be going to Vancouver to receive their 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 adding he doesn’t think they get anything other than prestige if they win.
They are influenced by old martial arts films, samurai movies and modern Korean films like “City of Violence” and “Oldboy.”
Gianna Magliocco, or by her director’s name , Gianna Isabella, has entered her second film “Dilemma,” in this year’s festival. She learned a lot from making her short film.
“I learned a lot while filming ‘Dilemma.‘ I learned about budgeting. To set some money aside for marketing the film as well as just the production and post production,” Isabella said adding a couple successful fund raising events as well as her generous brother helped.
“There are a lot of good, talented people making films here,” observed Isabella, a recent graduate of the University of Lethbridge’s new media program, adding the local film makers are very close knit.
Drama Beat
