Moondance International Film Festival 2008

Unhappy with the meaning of her life, a woman embarks a personal journey, and looking for answers. She moves assuredly on a path toward finding her true self…and the quest itself becomes her own transformation.

Money is what Mario, Tom, Jimmy and Emin want. They need Euros for different reasons, and find different ways to get them. Despite their separate interests, over the course of a single day their lives and fortunes become intertwined, and each gets what he deserves. Mario and Tom are two street punks who want to rob a bank. They ask the young Turkish Emin to be their driver. Emin can use the money & accepts, but he doesn’t have a getaway car, so…well, you’ll have to see this film to believe the comedy of errors that occurs.

A little girl writes a letter to her pet hamster, Fatty, who meets lots of animals during her travels and learns about the world outside her cage. Stop-motion characters are combined with collage backgrounds and cut-outs, to create this fantasy story.

What do you talk about while digging a grave? ‘Diggers’ explores the friendship between two workers at a cemetery, as they casually perform their duties without any real emotional commitment, at the funeral of a stranger. They play their usual game of imagining who she was and how she died, based on hints in the obituary. But as the storytelling proceeds, the stories take on personal significance. Their competing stories develop into an existential dialogue about one's approach to life, given the fact of an inevitable, yet unpredictable death.

This is the story of the awakening of a relationship between a woman and Nature. A young woman who finds herself lost in a maritime nature reserve, facing the elements alone. Instinctively, a dialogue begins. The filmmakers’ objective for this avant-garde film was to be able to capture a sense of what the environment offers, and to film their responses, guided by the weather, the tides, and whatever consequences they might discover.

Elizabeth begins her first day on the job as the new photocopy girl. She comes face to face with a beast of a copier with a dangerous personality and a vicious staple gun. Elizabeth calls on the local photocopy mechanic to help. Edgar is an expert in recalcitrant copiers and more than pleased to meet Elizabeth. But shyness prevails and it seems Edgar and Elizabeth’s romantic paths will never meet. But Elizabeth sends the ultimate photocopy to Edgar, and he loses all restraint and self control. Work place attraction has never been so dangerous!

In California’s Santa Monica Mountains, there is a stretch of road where the Sunday drive is still alive and well. The Rock Store was originally used as a stagecoach stop in the early 1900’s. What began as a simple grocery store, evolved into a motorcycle mecca. In addition to its fame as a motorcycle haven, the Rock Store gained a reputation as one of the top motorist destinations in the United States, and eventually became an epicenter for movie & TV star sightings. Steve McQueen & Jay Leno, and their motorcycles, are featured in this film.

‘Electric Heart’ is the story of one of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, Don Ellis. Ellis forged new paths in jazz-classical-rock, and his own version of world music, then took jazz to greater heights, and never bothered to look back. His signature '4-Valve Quarter-tone trumpet puts Ellis apart, musically, from anyone else. Maynard Ferguson, jazz legend, and conductor Leonard Bernstein were mentors to Ellis, and appear in this film. Ellis won the Grammy in 1972 for best instrumental arrangement for the Academy Award®-winning motion picture, ‘The French Connection’. He is generally considered one of the true purist's of this art form, and now his re-issued music is finally being re-discovered.