Feature film
December 22, 2009
Film Studies alumnus explores Malvolio’s revenge in first ever feature film
Malvolio, the name of a minor and pompous character in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is also the title of a new independent feature-length film written, produced and directed by film studies graduate Alex Kominek and his two brothers, Peter and Andrew.
The film, which premieres at the Plaza Theatre in Calgary December 26, picks up where Twelfth Night leaves off Malvolio’s story –he has discovered he is the victim of trickery and practical joking, a retribution for a previous infraction Malvolio himself had committed upon the other characters. Shakespeare’s play ends with Malvolio declaring to get revenge on everyone involved.
“The film asks what if Malvolio really came back to get revenge?” says Alex Kominek. “We set the film in modern times, turned the Duke into a mafia boss and turned this comedy into an action-thriller.”
The idea to depict Malvolio’s revenge on film came after Peter, the youngest of the Kominek brothers, was charged with creating a short, five-minute film about Twelfth Night as an assignment for his grade 12 English class. Alex, who was at the time a student in the Faculty of Communication and Culture’s film studies program, worked with brothers’ Peter and Andrew to later turn that high school assignment into a full-length feature film.
The biggest challenge for the team of brothers, who were then aged 18, 20 and 21 and had no previous film-making experience, was to create a film with a zero-dollar budget. They embraced it as an opportunity to get creative.
“We’re all fans of Robert Rodriguez and have studied books about his work and interviews with him,” says Kominek. “Rodriguez said that creativity is better than money, in most cases, and that you just need to think of creative ideas to compensate.”
“We wrote the film as if we had a multi-million dollar budget and then we had to figure out how to do things like film a motorcycle jumping off a cliff when we didn’t have a motorcycle or a cliff.”
Scheduling filming around their full time jobs, the film was three years in the making. The Kominek brothers recruited volunteer actors, recorded their own sound effects, composed an original orchestral score, and spent just under $1000. of their own money on costumes and food for the volunteers.
“Working with my brothers was great because we had the same vision for what the film was supposed to be and ideas for what would be cool, interesting and fun on the screen,” says Kominek.
The Kominek brothers have plans to submit the film to film festivals and have already written screenplays for their next two projects, one of which will begin filming in the winter of 2010.
The world premiere of Malvolio will screen December 26 at 4:30 pm at the Plaza Theatre in Kensington.
