A review of the film The gun the cake and the butterfly by Inesa de la Roche, Dark Theatre

It was a real pleasure watching the film "The Gun, The Cake and The Butterfly" by Amanda Eliasch.
The whole complexity of life inside one woman's world is full of sparks and mystery...
She playfully guides you through her personal stories and deeply touching intimate thoughts... She transforms into many women and becomes a multilayered goddess who masters her own destiny.
Amanda gently undresses her soul in front of the audience, leaving herself transparent and exposed... She expressed her loneliness through all poetic and romantic journey, she gets hurt, she burns and then she rises like a Phoenix, humour heals every wound in her nostalgic and an imaginative world... Amanda rules her creative and seductive Empire with her courage, confidence, intelligence and consciousness... It is her first film and it is an extraordinary achievement! I admire the way she has chosen to make her personal film in her own style, she knew exactly what she wanted and how to express her world cinematically as visual poetry, perhaps not polished the way Hollywood would perfect and sterilise any sort of reality which in most cases completely spoils the experience of real life, but Amanda's Eliasch film gives you the feeling of purity, honesty of life in cinema, leaving you deeply touched visually, wondering, questioning and mirroring your own feelings through her intimately fascinating and heart braking experiences... It's a magnificent 21st century liberated woman's film! The film maker Amanda Eliasch is a passionate artist, unstoppable visionary, she has no limitations within her confidence, creativity and endless imagination to manifest her own visions! There is so much to learn from her film and to be inspired by her honest and unique approach to making films!

Inesa De La Roche

Watch the movie online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmiWNyWr5Kc

Jean-Luc Godard as Architect

THE GUN THE CAKE AND THE BUTTERFLY LINK directed and written by Amanda Eliasch

This tells the story of Amanda Eliasch using poetry and music. The gun the cake and the butterfly

LA JOLLA INDIE FILM FESTIVAL

Quickly to say that I have been awarded best experimental art film by La Jolla Indie Film Festival. Thank you to all those involved. Now to the American Film Market with The gun the cake and the butterfly.

QUOTES ABOUT THE GUN THE CAKE AND THE BUTTERFLY

Acclaim for Amanda Eliasch’s

The Gun, The Cake and The Butterfly

“A brave account of an exciting life, lived by a woman who makes her own rules and then breaks them.”

                                                                                    Nigel Daley,

President, BAFTA – Los Angeles

“I was engrossed by the film – brave, proud and sad.”

                                   

                                                                                    Ed Pressman, Producer

“I enjoyed the film and found it very entertaining. It made me eager to find out more about you and your exotic life.”

                                                                                    David Korda

A very original, artistic and personal – Smanda is really putting herself out there as a bold new filmmaker.”

                                                                                    Sally Kirkland

Oscar nominated actress and Golden Globe winner

“An incredible piece of work – so brave and honest an sad and funny all in one bold and amazing way.”

                                                                                    Francesca Vinti

                                                                                    British Film Institute

“I was captivated…”

                                                                                    Joel Schumacher, Director

Your life is a kaleidoscope of events and deep emotions translated into a very powerful aesthetic. I watched your movie and time stopped.”

                                                                                    Marina Abramovich

                                                                                   

                                                           

"It takes huge  courage to show your own piece of art to anyone, and to show a film on a big screen, to a big audience is courage in the extreme – AND it was a completely open and honest , almost disarmingly honest, autobiographical film. 

I didn’t think the music was inaudible – I loved your choice of music, and thought it acted as a really great way of moving you thru the film. I also thought the cinematography and editing were very beautiful. There is a compelling, whimsical tone enhanced by the use of light which is very more-ish 

I would have like to have seen more of you in the film – we all said the same. You have something -  a delightful, slightly vulnerable, beguiling honest charm which is lost when someone else tries to do it". Amanda Neville BFI

"Consistency is the hobgoblin of the small mind"Julie Burchill

I am in two minds where to live. I arrived back this morning to pissing rain, and immediately went to bed. I met a charming man on the plane and talked for most of the journey. However this did not make up for my missing Los Angeles almost immediately.  This week was busy, I was exhausted, after my film The gun the cake and the butterfly, won Bel Air's Best Edit and Best film chosen by an audience my head can just about fit through the bedroom door, despite gracing the cover of  LAHollywood Weekly.  I love Los Angeles and their ability to open a box rather than close it. I opened LA Femme with it, the people who put on these festivals are creative and adore independent film.  (I am so happy the I was nominated as best Trailer and the New Media Film Festival, best art film NYCIFF, best art film at Ischia Global Film Festival, The Lina Wertmuller Prize, nominated as best female director Burbank International Film Festival, Bel Air Film Festival best edit and best film chosen by an audience) So much is is due to the people I employed to help me,  a family of creative people. Justine Glenton should win best actress, Boris Ristic's music has been much congratulated, editing and art direction by Behsat Ahment, Roby Meola, Hector Abaunza, cinema photographers, Jack English, Alexander Webster, Fredrik Andersson, Boris Ristic, and George Blodwell and Tim Willis. So much help, love and enthusiasm. I am thrilled.
My film is contradictory but I believe what Julie Burchill says, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of the small mind"  I love to show madness, my madness and sanity altogether. Oscar Wilde said that "It showed a lack of imagination"

LA FEMME HOLLYWOOD

I also decided to get a new Estate Agency,  Savills to sell my house on Cheyne Walk.  I would like to live twenty miles from London, perhaps its time to see a bit of green, but my uncle said it is social suicide to live in Surrey. I shall keep Beauchamp Estates and Alan Russell, but the truth is that Savills have incredible internet presence, and I want to grab the sunshine in Los Angeles while I can.  The flight despite the delectable man is a bit too much for me.
Anyway I shall follow the new ideas of selling my artwork with the house and have asked the agents to mention my Car painted by Inkie the Graffitti artist. A new life is always funny, and I wish to do as much as possible with it. Someone else can enjoy the views from my bedroom and perhaps my artwork. I always love being a follower of fashion.
In the meantime I am learning how to sell a film and what it means to my purse.

MY LIFE IS FULL OF DREAMS

MY LIFE IS FULL OF DREAMS

My life is full of dreams. I am sitting here on the balcony, with my film, which I wrote, directed and produced, The gun the cake and the butterfly, being shown in tonight at The Ischia Global Film Festival. It is run by the energetic Pascal Vicedomini. I am thinking.  He is a visionary, with caterpillar vision, he assembles talent wit passion, creating a totally unique experience where everyone gladly supports each other.

“ Wow, how lucky am I,  I think?” How on earth did all this happen in a year? The truth is Pascal is instinctive, and what he likes he likes.

He creates panels that discuss International issues and concerts on the beach, everything is done with joy and aplomb. Fireworks abound. I am about to win the Lina Wertmuller prize, in remembrance of her husband, Enrico Jobb, she is the first, out of only four women, to be nominated for an Academy Award.

This festival is very different. 

Cannes and Venice are huge, tricky to manouvre and full of clipboard doormen who  won’t allow you in. Thousands of people flock to festivals, crowded, hot and glamorous.

Ischia is about family, a talented family, involving friendship.

Yes I am right, with my thoughts  “What you are doing, is what you are doing. This has always been   my belief , and I am with one of my favourite actresses of all time Natasha Kinski,(The best author in the whole planet for me is Thomas Hardy, and Tess was my favourite heroine) she played her so well,  and  French actress Emanuelle Segnier. Who is showing her film Venus and Fur directed by husband Roman Polanski, her husband’s new film.

I keep pinching myself. I am following my passion.

Everybody is relaxed. 1950’s distressed glamour. Ischia is not Capri and it’s not Rome. The famous introduce themselves,, as if you could not possibly know them. There is something very charming about this. You cannot lobby to be a part of Pascal’s Film Festivals, you have to be anointed to participate.

I have been included in four festivals now, The New Media Film Festival, The New York International Film Festival and have just been selected for the Bel Air Film Festival. The Ischia Global Film Festival, and Have won, “The most imaginative documentary film” in NY. I feel very chuffed. I think, “yes I did this, as a woman for women”.  I thought, I cannot be one of the Kadashian’s who wear ‘strap on’s’ before 9.30 am in Los Angeles, I could only be me.

I thought, I would pinch lines wherever I could, when writing, instead of snorting them.  I could not be one of those people who did  not have a line on their face and only under their nose.

The only people that have ever thought I was a star were London taxi drivers. I enter a cab on the streets of London and the first question they ask is “ What films have you been in, are you a model?”  I never know what to answer?, I do not want to disappoint the charming man driving me.  However, the truth is, that despite drama school ALRA and RADA, I liked to be hidden. As my eldest son says “A blonde has unfair advantages over the rest of the planet, and you Mummy, can never hide”  

We know through film you can influence the world. Through pictures music and thought, you can change what is going on. I think we can all give back and choose our own platforms, inspiring communities to think.

Last year women were moaning that there were too few serious positions held in the film world by women. Few films were made by them.   I thought I would have a go. I thought I would learn and expand from the experience. Indeed I did.  I thought I would use my own story, I could be blatantly honest, cruelly so. I had no intention of acting it but combining the script with a documentary to create the artistic world I inhabit so merrily. I enjoyed the focus,

I thought I would be finished in three weeks.

I was not.

The first edit I showed my friend the composer Boris Ristic thought it was nothing like me and that I had to be in it. So I decided at that point to intertwine my characteristics with the other actress Justine Glenton and with the actors I involved.

I don’t care about failure, I care about doing and being open and vulnerable to the world, I have put myself out there and I expect ‘judgement day’, but I am proud about what I have accomplished and how I feel, despite, having  to sell my favourite house to do it. Nobody gave me a dime, it was all me, for good and bad.

The story of my upbringing in Wiltshire to being tapped on the shoulder and realizing I have just contributed to the wonderful world of female film directors. Katherine Bigelow, Lyn Ramsey, Madonna, Jane Campion, Vanessa Redgrave, Kerry and Rory Kennedy, Barbara Streisand and my favourite Sofia Coppola. They are bold and strong, having the faith to follow their own voices against all odds.

Now it’s my turn, I have entered stage right and I have no exit. I am addicted to the critics and the applause.