WTI Magazine #24    2014 Apr, 04
Author : Simone doc Bracci      Translation by:

Looking for a unique prospective in the deep American film market, we found an italian talent that fights every single day to establish in the independent ndustry. Hollywood has no mercy? Well, maybe this time we can support something which deserves real promotion.

"Echoes" is a psycho-drama short film, that has received various nominations and won different awards around the world. It is well known for its unique style, storytelling and impressive VFX. The author Andrea La Mendola lives in Los Angeles, working on a peculiar adaptation, a thriller feature film that's still a secret.

"Echoes" evokes suspense, elegance. When Andrea chose the title, he was thinking to a classic reference, Ovidio's metamorphosis, the Narcissus and in a certain way the topic is very similar. The questions he was trying to answer in the movie is: where does an extreme form of narcissism bring a human being? When narcissism is brought to the limits what happens to the beauty? Echoes also reminds him of a memory that slowly fades out and disappears.

It's not very easy for Italian directors and authors in general to fit in the Hollywood system. Americans know the Italian directors mostly through neorealism, from what Fellini & co did in their long careers. That was an amazing cinema, but very far from what Hollywood and the American film industry looks for. Italian directors should find a way to promote their origins and at the same time show that they can adapt to a very structured system like this. The Italian movie business right now is not really able to support an international wave of Italian authors.

Andrea thinks that generally there are three key points that you wanna follow to try to break into Hollywood. Know your craft very very well, be unique in your vision and do an incredible amount of networking and PR (promotion and marketing). Then, of course, you have to constantly work on your skills. There is a big introspective moment that you have to pass through. Then learn how to work in team and deal with very complex and various behaviors. Analyze the market and understand what's the best thing to offer, and not necessarily just from a commercially point of view.

And finally, according to Andrea, you have to acquire two opposite skills that actually saved him plenty of times: learn how to prepare everything in advance analyzing the details, but even more learn how to improvise.

Now Echoes is commercially distributed on Indieflix, Roku and xbox and it's going really well. It is probably done with the festival circuit where it obtained very good results. It's still shown from time to time in public, but Andrea is very focused on his new movies right now. One of them follows the line of the psychological thriller, so Echoes is a very good reference for it.

This is something that Andrea La Mendola learnt in Hollywood: you always wanna have your next project ready and be projected to what's next and not that much on what you did. It's a cultural thing that means "which story I wanna tell next?!?"