This is the first time I have ever volunteered to be a writer for a film festival and having just moved to southern California- I am writing about movies for the Temecula International Film and Music Festival just a few weeks away, Septemer 9-13th. Let me tell you, there are a lot of fabulous independent movies being shown- American, Australian, Spanish, Italian, French. And to top it off, local wineries Kenya and La Cereza, as well as Latis Import's Palm Brewery, Belgium's largest independent brewery, will also be present with lots of fabulous wine and beer. Enjoy the opening night parade of uniformed Marines in their dress blues and antique cars of rrrrare beauty! And there will be over 50 bands, from all over the world, playing in between the movies.

Last night, I wrote out the program notes for the Spanish and Italian movie selections. If you are in to foreign independent film and you are in the Los Angeles/San Diego area this September 9-13th and you like wine and parades and lots of sunlight, you should stop by! Corey Haim and Crispin Glover will be roaming around, among many others.... whose names escape me at the moment, just remember those two. Check the website or a program for more details! www.tviff.com

INDEPENDENT SPANISH MOVIES:

2009 Winners Temecula International Film + Music Festival

September 9-13th, TVIFF.COM

UNA VIDA MEJOR
Spain, 2008, 15 min
Writer/Director: Luis Fernàndo Reneo
Cast: Sierra Paris, Vicky Villavozo y Javier Mendoz

Based on a true story, A better Life is the faithful account of 3 Mexican children who got lost in the Sonoran desert while trying to cross the U.S. Border. A history that repeats itself every week in the border towns of Mexico, feeding one of the most profitable illegal businesses, immigrant smuggling.



PARKINS
Spain, 2009, 11 min
Writer/Director: Jorge Molina
Producer: Zoe Berriatùa
Cast: Pablo Turégano

An executive goes to get his car... when he discovers that someone else has beaten him to it.



DI ME QUE YO
Spain, 2008, 15 min
Writer/Director/Producer: Mateo Gil
Producer: Lola Herraiz
Cast: Fele Martinez, Judith Diakhate

HE and SHE meet exactly at the same time they break up with their own couples. Is it possible for two strangers to begin a conversation full of recriminations, arguing until they get hoarse, and passionately reconcile as is they were a  couple in the mud?



TU(A)MOR
Spain, 2009, 13 min
Writer/Director: Fernando Franco
Producer: Pantalla Partida, Lolita Films,  Mario Mandueno, Samuel Martinez, Damián  Paris.
Cast: Andrés Gertrudix, Sarah-Laure Estragnat

The sentimental relationship between Andrés and Sara is a living organism.



THE END
Spain, 2008, 28 min
Writer/Director: Eduardo Chapero-Jackson
Producer: Pepe Jordana
Casst: Samuel Roukin, Natalie Press, Ewan Beatie, Charlie Creed Miles, Eileen Walsh, Evie Duncan, Miguel Ángel Silvestre

A middle class American family must fight for survival in a nation being torn apart by the lack of water.



METROPOLIS FERRY
Spain, 2008, 16 min
Writer/Director: Juan Gautier
Writer: Pablo Cabellero
Producer José Ángel Jim?nez
Cast: Sergio Peris-Mechenta, Olaya Martin, Pepe Lorente, Ahmen Younoussi, Xaier Martinez Murua, Pedro Martinez Beitia, Javier Mejia

David returns from a trip to Morocco with his brothers. In the frontier with Spain an incident occurs and he decides he wants to take part.



LA TAMA
Spain, 2008, 19 min
Director: Marin Costa
Cast: Rocio Monteagudo, Arantxa Zambrano, Ana Maria Soriano, Alicia Cilfredo, Maria Arjona

Tama is a troubled teenager. Tired of constantly fighting with her mother, takes on on a journey with no return.



DOPPELGÄNGER
Spain, 2009, 20 min
Writer/Director: Óscar de Julián
Producer: Rogelio Abraldes, Carlos Valcárcel
Cast: Óscar de Julián

Óscar de Julián discovered that there is ANOTHER Óscar de Julián. From that moment on, their lives will be intertwined. Both stories blend together in the end, you will not be able to understand one story without the other.

INDEPENDENT ITALIAN MOVIES:

2009 Winners Temecula International Film + Music Festival

September 9-13th, TVIFF.COM

MISS JULIE
Italy, 2009, 90 min
Director: Michael Margotta
Cast: Olimpia Marmoross, Marco Boini, Beatrice Orlandini, Roberto Zibetti, Simone Spinazze', Martina Codesca, Roberta Stellato, Sara De Mezzo.

The choice to make a film out of one of the most performed plays of all times comes directly from Stringberg, 'Miss Julie's' realistic dialogue develops into a heightened exaggerated style. In this production we are seeking to bring together these two elements of production: the theatrical plan of meanings and a cinematic approach of their actions.


NARCISCO
Italy, 2008, 95 min
Director: Marcello Baldi, Dario Baldi
Cast: Roberto Herlizka, Amina Syed, Alessandro Di Natale, Catherine Feller, Gennaro Ciccirillo

Cisco is the nickname of Narcisco Dal Cason, an eighty-four year old man, alpine, ex partisan, and was born and grew up in a little village of Trentino, where he has worked all of his life. After 20 years of silence, Tommaso Cisco's son, returns to the father's home with a Muslim woman and her son. The young woman while getting in contact with the mountain culture will be a detonator for a series of contrasts inside the village but will also present on occasion for acceptance and mutual respect.


SLEEPING AROUND
Italy 2008, 100 min
Director: Marco Carniti
Cast: Anna Galiena, Dario Grandinetti, Danilo Nogrelli, Marco Foschi, Francesca Faiella, Jun Ichikawa, Carmen Giardina, Lorenzo De Angelis, Jamil Hammudi, Carolina Salvati

A Contemporary fresco of the decadence of sexuality. A merry go round of meetings, sex, disease, drugs, loneliness, and pain. Ten characters living in a metropolis in search of the meaning for  their own  existence. A bitter comedy that combines the comical and paradoxical elements of a cruel everyday life in a world that has lost its soul and its ability to love. Fragments of life, however funny and peculiar, it is also pitiless and merciful.

L'ULTIMA VOLTA
Italy, 2008, 9 min
Director: Andrea Constantini
Cast: Paolo Seganti, Rolando Ravello, Valentina Correani, Fabrizio Bucci

Armando has kept his identity secret from his fiance'. Armando is the number one champion clandestine street fighter, and he desperately wants to change his life for her, but he has one last fight to honor....



LA PREDA
Italy, 2009, 18 min
Director: Francesco Apice
Cast: Paolo Sassanelli, Valerio Tramentozzi, Tommaso Miro' Sturno, Celcelia Dazzi

As Giulio and Lorenzo, 11 and 9 years old leave for school for the day their father decides to pick them up. Unknown to the mother, the father arrives in his new flaming sports car and drives the children to their old house in the mountain for the weekend. It's Giulio's birthday and the father gives him a shotgun as a present. The next day, together with the little brother, they all make their way into the woods to go hunting....



MI CHIAMO SEBY
Italy, 2008, 30 min
Director: Gabriele Galanti
Cast: Jurio Ambrogio, Nico Grasso, Gianluca FranzÒ, Sebastiano Funcia Di Maria

'Mi chiammo Seby' is the story of a young boy growing up in a mafia environment, arrested for racketeering. In jail, each prisoner tries to get space through violence but, Seby shows how, beyond his gangster mindset, there is a deeper poetic side to him.



NERO APPARENTE
Italy, 2008, 56 min
Director: Giuseppe Pizzo
Cast Giovanni Capalbo, Enrico Roccaforte, Kassim Yassin, Rosa C. Scaglione, Georgia Sinicorni

A girl steps outside a small restaurant to smoke a cigarette and a thief steals her hand bag. The waiter of the restaurant and a group of young men passing by start to chase the thief. The chase is furious, but the thief manages to mingle his way out of sight amongst the passing crowd until the waiter and the young men sight him once again.

SOFIA
Italy, 2008, 20 min
Director: Carlo Sironi
Cast: Blu Yoshimi, Elena Bizzaglia, Gualtiero Burzi, Alessandra Roca

Through the eyes of Clara, a thirteen year old girl, we find the world of her little sister, Sofia. Sofia doesn't talk and uses things as extensions of her body, using their sound to create a language. Clara is that shadow line where childhood is finished and adolescence is still to come. Two different worlds put in comparison. So close that they could never touch.


TRENI STRETTANMENTE RISERVATI
Italy, 2008, 12 min
Director: Emanuele Scaringi
Cast: Flavio Nuccitelli, Tatiana Di Raimo, Antonella Britti, Arianna Moriones, Paolo Perinelli

Everyday the same people get on the same busy and dirty train to reach Rome. Someone is ashamed, someone can't stand the situation. Some 'brave people' prefer to venture to the only free compartment on the train: “The Gipsy's apartment”. People do not like the Gipsies but in this case they are forced to share the same space. Everyday in the train compartment you can see the silly mentality of the person who does not understand the integration in in any case the easiest solution.

TV
Italy, 2009, 13 min
Director: Andrea Zacciarello
Cast: Salvatore Cantalupe, Michela Cescon, Antonella Longo, Michela Scrocca

A man buried in 200,000 euro of debts. A lonely and washed out woman working for a debt collecting agency and they have an enounter. Filled with touch luck, this is a story detailing the chance of obtaining a reprieve, a postponement. This is a film about a show about TV and its viewers. Installents, debts, love and death... it's all here.


UN'INFERMIERA DI NOME LAURA
Italy, 2008, 25 min
Director: Stefano Viali
Cast: Stefano Viali, Maria Genatiempo, Roberto Mantovani, Ottavia Bianchi

Pietro wakes up in a strange hospital lacking the use of his legs and has no recollection ofo who he is an dhow he came to be there. Laura, a creepily evasive nurse, and Leo, an old mentally-derranged patient, seem to be the only people in this absurd place.




STRETTI AL VENTO
Italy, 2008, 96 min
Director: Daniele Guarnera, Grancesco Del Grosso
Cast: Simone Bianchetti, Pasquale De Gregorio, Silvio Dell'Accio, Ettore Dottori, Andrea Gancia, Vittorio Malingri, Franco Manzoli, Inbar Meytsar, Matteo Micheli, Andrea Pendibene, Piero Pieroni, Giovanni Soldini

Little and great human odysseys told by the most important Italian lone sailors, all with different age, ideas and navigational goals following the lead of the national and international sea scene.


ALBA(down)
Italy, 2008, 9 min
Director: Giorgia Farina
Cast: Tommaso Facchi, Sara D'Amario, Vincenzo Bocciarelli

Alba is a beautiful fairytale set in the real world. Even in the darkest corners there can be a better future if only we believe and are willing to fight for it. This sort cleverly combines film and animation to portray the life and dreams of a boy stricken with illness. Following his experiences we see how the sterile and sombre life in the world of a hospital explodes in the bright colors of a brilliant world of adventure.


ANANKE
Italy, 2008, 18 min
Director: Alfredo Mazzara
Cast: Antonella Ponziani, Federico Rosati, Giovanni La Gorga

Next Future. A man is accused for homicide and fights against a new and frightening system of punishment that's considered perfect by the society.


BAB AL SAMAH
Italy, 2008, 13 min
Director: Francesco Sperandeo
Cast: Mohammed Sayari, Mohammed Kouka, Fabrizio Bucci, Montassar Magli, Serena Napoli

Mehdi's desire for redemption from a humiliating past is symbolized by a heavy and old door which leads him on a cathartic journey resulting in the destruction of the door by a purifying fire.



COL SANGUE AGLI OCCHI
Italy, 2008. 25 min
Directed by Lorenzo Sportiello
Cast: Erica Banchi, Nausicaa Benedettini, Didier Nahm Delfi, David Pietrosi

Three friends that are a little over eighteen years old share an exclusive and pathological friendship. They share a love music and their desire to leave the “motionless city” in which they live. By accident then find a gun and decide to do a few small robberies, just to makes some money in order to go away towards London. But, their friendship will end in blood and their dreams will be shattered on the wall of reality that surmounts them.


FRANÇOIS
Italy, 2008, 44 min
Director: Dario Gorini, Lacopo Zannon
Cast: Luca Linonello, Diane Fleri, Tommaso Ramenghi, Maria Sole Mansutti, Rosa Sironi, Sergio Albelli

In an intimate and fine bar, three women and three men always choose the same table to look for their soul mate. The play goes on until the arrival of a mysterious entity who speaks French inexplicably.


LO PARLO
Italy, 2008, 20 min
Director: Marco Gianfreda
Cast: Orlando Rudnicki, Alessio Vassallo, Valentina D'Agonistina

Bruno is 12 years old and desires to befriend Luca (25), the boyfriend of his sister Claudia. Unfortunately, Bruno is invisible in the eyes of Luca. After Bruno catches Luca flirting with another girl, he sees the opportunity to attain his goal. 

L'AMORE É UN GIOGO
Italy, 2008, 13 min
Director: Andrea Rovetta
Cast: Neri Marcoré, Cecilia Dazzi, Mattia Sbragia, Stefano Fresi, Vanni Bramati, Nando Irene, Alessandra Rossi

During a poker game, a man bets and loses everything he owns. Maybe he's not a good player, or maybe he doesn't care about losing since he no longer has the only thing that truly matters to him: love. Maybe.