Although the screening was now a couple of months ago, I have been wanting to do a piece on the presentation of Harry Mavromichalis’s short films at Almuñecár’s Casa de la Cultura and have finally found the space.
The place was packed out on the day of the screening, all the more remarkable when you consider that you are very often the only person sitting in front of the screen for a big Hollywood production in multi-cinemas in the El Ingenio shopping centre, for example. Yes, it was free, but so were the European Elections, and hardly anybody turned up for those either.
But seriously, I was impressed by the full house and the evident enthusiasm wafting around the cinema during the screening of the three shorts: The Visit, Finley and Ana Lucia. Let’s start in reverse order.
Ana Lucia: (Duration 16 minutes) Ana, a 13-year-old deaf girl from Andalucía, possesses a love and passion for flamenco. After being abandoned as a child by her father, Ana becomes the sole provider for her alcoholic mother and her 4-year-old brother. As a result of Ana’s isolation and loneliness she creates an imaginary companion who appears when she is in distress. Lucia, a beautiful flamenco dancer, becomes the mother figure that Ana so desperately longs for. But as Ana leaves her childhood behind, she must come face to face with Lucia’s existence.
Ana Lucia was shot in Almuñécar (in the municipal market, amongst other locations). Auditioning was done in Sevilla, Málaga, Granada, Almuñécar.
The Visit: This short film was shot in 16mm in Long Island in 2006. It was interesting because of the amount of emotion, both prime and secondary, squeezed into such a short projection (five minutes), which was set in the 1920’s. The costumes and make up were very evocative of this singular epoch.
‘It is a tale about a rich but promiscuous man (Mark Irish) whose past (Eryn Raftery) is about to interrupt his peaceful marital life (Niae Knight). Part hurt, part revenge drive the lover to blackmail the husband. But we realize that the adults’ lives are not the only ones touched by the encounter. More profound is the change that, from that moment on, has occurred in the heart of a child.’
Finley (Duration 12 minutes) This film has the most dialogue and portrays a family environment where the parents – more accurately, the father – is intent on imposing ‘normality’ on his teenage daughter. The mother is desperate to avoid conflict, wanting to help the daughter but reluctant to enter into conflict with her husband – it’s an unequal, tug of war, with the inevitable loser being tomboy Finley. Or not…?
‘Finley is happiest when playing baseball. She is the only girl in her team and she has an extremely great relationship with her team mates. As the prom is approaching, her parents demand that she go with a boy. To please them, she agrees to do what they say. She reluctantly wears the dress that her parents have bought for her, and agrees to go to the prom with the son of her father’s colleague. Feeling extremely awkward with the way she looks, she tells the boy to drop her off at the next corner. Through his gentle approach, he convinces her to stay with him, but instead of the prom they go to the beach where they start to become friends. At the end of the night they are playfully wrestling and this leads to the boy trying to kiss Finley. For just one second she allows him, but soon after she starts to struggle and demands he stop. She pushes him off and runs home.
Arriving home, she is confronted once again with her parents who are completely unwilling to understand that she is different from other girls. At that moment she realizes that they will never be able to understand and accept her for who she is and so has to make a very important decision.’
Mavromichalis received his MFA (Masters in Fine Arts) in Film Directing from New York University. He studied under world famous directors and actors like Spike Lee (Insider, Summer of Sam), Paul Haggis (Casino Royale, Crash, Million Dollar Baby), and Jodie Foster.
He has directed many short movies both in New York and Spain. He just completed his first music video for a Sony/BMG artist and has been writing his first feature-length script that he plans to shoot in 2010 in Cyprus. Other projects include directing spec commercials for American Apparel and Johnnie Walker, and organizing different types of cinema workshops in Cyprus with American professionals from the movie industry.
You can find out more at www.cvproductions1.com