L'ECONOMISTE: GINO MCKOY'S FILM LUMINA, PRODUCED BY GOLDOVE, RESTARTS FILM PRODUCTION IN MARRAKECH
FINALLY, a resumption of international film shoots at Marrakech. The producers, the Canadian McKoy family, come to finish shooting a movie science fiction film, Lumina, filmed entirely in Marrakech and Ouarzazate. And it's Gino McKoy who ensures the writing and directing in thus signing his first feature film.
Gino Justin Hudson McKoy is a singer-songwriter Canadian, writer-director and also producer of songs. The McKoy's music has been presented at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and the Cricket World Cup 2007 in Jamaica. For his first feature film, he wanted to make it in Africa.
"And Morocco automatically established itself as a filming location," says Gino McKoy. It is as well as the director and his teams production facilities have landed in Marrakech last October, despite the crisis sanitary. A first choice of local executive producer delayed by a few weeks filming. But finally, this delay was made up thanks to the experience and expertise of second executive producer with whom they collaborated, Dune Production.
The film is about desperate exploits friends looking for underground military base. Whether they get there or no, what they find in the desert will change their life. After having been hunted by an alien, threatened and followed by the government and chased by lights in the sky, they realize that they are are sunk too deep ...
All the scenes were shot in the studios and in the desert. "The landscapes of Morocco have allowed to perform all scenes that I imagined with my boss decoration, ”says McKoy. For certain special effects, the production called on specialists from abroad, but the rest of the staff were Moroccan.
"The the most sensitive production department heads were all Moroccans ”, confirms Ahmed Abounouom, boss of Dune Films, executive producer at the local level. Nearly 250 Moroccans worked for this work either in the staff technical or as extras. In total, production in Morocco cost an envelope of 23 million DH without including the stamp artists.
The shooting lasted 5 months since last October with in the cast of actor Eric Roberts (several times nominated for the Golden Globes Award and Oscars), Ken Lawson, Eleanor Williams and full other actors.
The film crew spent several months in the city of Marrakech in a hotel belonging to the family of a another great Moroccan director Souheil Ben Barka, the Kech hotel. And the good news is that the director and producer is so delighted with his experience in Morocco that he will do it again in July / next august.
Indeed, he is preparing a another film with Michael Sloan. The Canadian writer and producer has made several series and films for television. He is also at the origin of the resurrection of several series cults, sometimes for TV movies like The Man Who Was Worth Three billion). This film will be shot in next summer in Morocco with Denzel Washington in the cast, McKoy. He won't say more