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Marco Brunu and the spark of creation

My name is Marco Brunu. I am an Italian who has lived in Holland for 35 years. I make films and write screenplays for myself. I enjoy traveling in an endless universe of fantastic worlds, all different from one another, where each time everything changes and everything is created anew.

It all begins with a small spark that suddenly illuminates the darkness of my mind – maybe while I'm going to work, or while I'm eating or even while I'm arguing with my wife (in that situation, the light turns off immediately because I am committed to ensure that the dishes that she throws hit me!)

In short, this little light in my head is the beginning of everything, it is my personal BIG BANG, from which will be born the fantastic worlds that I mentioned and into which I embark on a fantastic voyage.

People watching

If I'm not mistaken the great Eli Wallach once said:  “I do not make films to live, I live to make films.” These are the words that inspire me every time. Making movies for me is a thing as natural as breathing, I was born with the gift of a great and inexhaustible imagination, from which I draw liberally what I need to make my films. Another thing that helps me a lot in the creation of my work is observation.

Watching the people around me, like these folk walking, or answering the phone, or how these ones are sitting in the restaurant and what that one might do and say while he is sitting on the toilet. I watch and I learn their tics and their foibles, their way of reacting to problems, or their way of breaking-off a relationship. In short, I am fascinated by humanity, who every day are so different and at the same so similar.

Family Reunion

As for my last film Family Reunion, the idea I came to me after reading in the paper of a guy who was thrown from the fourteenth floor of a building one night and no one would have noticed his death had it not been that his cell-phone kept ringing inside his jacket pocket. At that moment, while I was reading, I thought maybe that was his mother calling to invite him to dinner. Here's what turned on that famous little light in my mind of which I spoke earlier.

Of course all the phone calls in the film are a figment of my imagination. In reality I have a relationship with my family than it more than good and I have no problem with them.

I wrote the film in three days, I shot it in one afternoon and I did everything all completely by myself. I had the camera's monitor turned towards me, I was the director, sound engineer and lighting man and the editor. Not for nothing are my films marked ONEMANMOVIE Productions.

Reactions

When my friends and my family saw Family Reunion for the first time, their instinct was to call the police because they thought I had really killed all my loved ones. Then they looked at my face and many of them have told me that every day that passes increases my sweet madness.

In December 2014 this film was in "Ronde Venen Filmfestival" in Vinkeveen in Holland. At that time it was nominated for the semifinals of the NOVA (Nederlandse Organisatie Van Audiovisuele Amateurs). And if is once again selected to participate in the final to be held in Venlo at the end of this year. Meanwhile I continue to send my film to various film festivals in Europe and see what happens.

Finally I can say that I love to make so-called low-cost, no-cost movies, without special effects and with very few resources. This is because I want to prove that it is not important to have a million dollars available for a cast of exceptional actors, to go to exotic locations to shoot etc. etc. Sometimes just a small table, an untidy room and a bit of skill in front of the camera is enough to tell something beautiful. Make no mistake: if the story is really interesting and exciting, those are special effects enough to keep the viewer enthralled all the time and in the darkness of a room you will enjoy all the magic that only a movie can give.