Almeria Clips
By Juan J. López
November 9, 2014
For years a group of western European fans gather almost
every year in Almeria to shoot small amateur films, with the simple goal of
recalling the shootings that were made in our province as well as, having a
great time and having fun as gunfighters. Comparisons with classical shootings
abound, the disparity of the origin of language and its participants, as
coexistence with other movies, that crossed occasionally with Roman soldiers
involved in Clavius.
Almeria Clips has long wanted to talk about them, and
this year we were able to talk to two of its
directors and certain
participants.
El Tenedor
Ray Watts is English and tells as an18 year-old he saw
the Sergio Leone films and fell in love with the stories, film, music and
scenery. The opera of violence is where I learned most about the genre and
where they were made. Since then his family has vacationed in Spain and on one
of those trips he was led to Almería and saw the sets and villages of the West
including EL CONDOR "where a guard came up to us and said that we could
take no pictures. But a few pesetas changed hands and made him happy and he
took us on a tour. The fort was solid and still in good condition."
The year 2012 they planned in advance to attend the
Almeria Western Film Festival, but ultimately the organization changed dates
delaying the celebration a month but they still chose to come to Almeria and in
order to have fun at the locations he wrote a script and the group filmed a
small short, which was extended in 2013, and again in 2014 "adding more
characters, including Lone Fleming and her sister. El Tenador is a tribute to
the character of Cuchillo, played by Tomas Milian in several films.
"Altogether we had fifteen days to shoot over three years and has also
filmed in Tabernas in Albaricoquas and Calahorra.
Although their expectations at the beginning was to make
a film for them, "once you have a soundtrack recorded, I'll upload it to You
Tube or Vimeo for a wider audience." Ray also has a Sergio Leone's
locations page called A Fisftul of Locations. This also carries a video channel
where you can watch some of their earlier work called swlocations.
This year he has shot a final chapter called HOLD THE
DAMN GROUND in the remains of the abandoned Exodus set in Alhamilla, "It
means to be an ancient town where a confrontation between the Navajo and the
other protagonists develops." Besides the professional actress Lone
Fleming in the cast includes Enrico Borracuda (Helsinki), Anne Hagel (Germany),
Ian Foster and Jill Foster (Scotland), Adrian McAllister (Ireland), and Justin
Isenberg and Raymond Isenberg (USA) Luz Altamira, Javier Ramos and Jose Hita
(Spain), Julian Braithwaite (Norway) and Chris Keller (Germany) ... for now.
One of the actors who has appeared every year is Ian Foster,
who is known for this commercial for Lidl which we announced a few months ago
appearing twice as Lee Van Cleef. His first contact with Almeria, was visiting
the Festival Western de Tabernas "Friends Ray Watts and Adrian McAllister
took me to several original locations of the movies." Someone said I
looked like Lee Van Cleef and so I sought some appropriate clothes and then joined
HOLDER. For Ian the shooting "Was a lot of fun, with many wonderful
friends, great locations and a magnificent time" Tabernas "is a good
place to stay, everything we need is only fifteen minutes away."
,,, AND THEN THE
VULTURES HAD A FEAST
"... AND THEN THE VULTURES HAD A FEAST" with
this title almost guess what's going on in the film that has produced by
Christian Keller, who first visited Almeria in 1985 "was on vacation with
my family in Vera and persuaded them to go to Mini Hollywood, we visited both
villages and took photographs, at Mini Hollywood and Fort Bravo because I already had the
camera, and since then I became interested in the villages and the desert in
western Europe, also in war movies and later adventure films."
I wondered how I could get to shoot a movie later,
Christian tells us "In the old Spaghetti Western Forum by John Nudge in
2003 Mario Marsili offered me a chance to go to Almeria, so we prepared a
gathering in March 2004 with people from New Zealand, Europe, Asia and America,
it was a great occasion together in Albaricoquas, and many of that group
returned in 2004. We still watch movies filmed in Almeria and honoring the
classics of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Unfortunately today Albaricoquas is surrounded
by plastic, so we moved to San Jose and Nijar, but this year we stayed in
Tabernas. Best of all is that people from different countries met at a place we
all like, and built a friendship in some cases lasting more than ten years,
thanks to Almeria and these films."
The plot of the film tells us that "many people come
to a well to fetch water at the same time, no one knows anyone and nobody
trusts anybody. To make things more difficult, the group is under threat from a
group of bandits in the surrounding hills, they believe that someone in the
group knows where a treasure is, but no one knows who. Then a woman who was
abducted by robbers flees and takes refuge with the threatened group. Soon one
of the group is killed. "In addition to the cast of El Tenador, the film
also features Madlen Vogt, Ulrich Angersbach and Daniel Maier all from Germany.
Last year I had a story to shoot in the summer but the
farmhouse where they had booked suddenly canceled the reservation and we had to
leave, but we still shot a fake trailer called 4 HYENAS FOR DJAMANGO we
recommend that you see it, and then filmed it this year, "The main
objective is to have fun and feel like we were shooting as a group, if the
result is good we'll see if we can introduce it to some event or
festival." "Not everything went as planned in the shooting schedule
but there have been no major problems, only some stress and despair, but no
disaster. Tabernas has been brilliant in all aspects. The locations are
stunning, it's not hard to get great images thanks to the landscape. The
village of Tabernas was also perfect, very friendly, with lots of bars with
cold beer and delicious tapas. It's a great place. Regards for GRANKA"
Anne Hagel is one of the few who speaks Spanish and has
participated in both projects and some short films and theater while living in
Los Angeles and in Germany "I know Chris Keller (director of Vultures and
Djamango) from many years ago. He traveled to Almeria for the first time in 2004
and always told me about his lovely experiences. But it was in 2012 when he
asked me if I wanted to participate in his film "Vultures" to take
place in 2014 and of course I accepted immediately. "On THE HOLDER AND
VULTURES" is the second year now (I started in 2013 to play the role of
Estella) and it was always fun, we laughed a lot and the cast became more and more
professional every year. The shooting of "Vultures" was very
professional. We worked eight hours every day in the desert very concentrated
and we were all very dedicated to this project (of course we also laughed a
lot)."
Like the rest of Tabernas, "I love Tabernas! It is a
very picturesque village with warm inhabitants. I feels like coming home and
although I'm moving to Brazil in January, I am returning to Tabernas next year.
A special greeting for Mercedes and Javier del Granka - our favorite bar in
Tabernas. And I want to thank all our native friends who joined us, helped us
and are much of the magic of this land of cinema and are so special! "
So we’ll just have to wait some time to see these
projects on the Internet. It's good to see that not only large film productions
lives but these small productions help in many ways to show our land and keep
alive a genre for which we can feel very proud. Thanks to all the team members.
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