The above-titled, approximately 18-minute (including credits), early 21st Century, inner city fable opens in a river-bordering Courtyard where Roman Moon Goddess Luna suspends her chess game against Duende, intercepts blind old German Bernhardt and grants him two wishes, then transports him with restored eyesight to the Land where the Lemon Trees bloom where a seashell-necklaced Little Maiden gives them both lemons and he beholds the Little Shepherd on the Rock, harbinger of his doom. Luna then returns Bernhardt to the Courtyard where, before resuming her chess game, she grants his third wish via "il bacio della morte" and covers his closed eyes with two silver dollars for Charon to ferry his soul across the Styx into Hades, where he awakens on a red "magic carpet," rises and wanders from one bucolic locale to another, and walks down a trail that forms a T-section with another, where he encounters the three Afterlife Shades who are to escort him to Schlaraffenland. Click: 1) this page's two vimeo links for a) detailed synopsis and 2:34 clip from the semi-[more like 90%]-final cut and b) 2:04 clip from "Luna and Bernhardt: Behind the Scenes"; 2) flickr: biurlari in upper-left address bar [box]--A.K.A. location or URL bar--for Luna & Bernhardt Preproduction Stills, 2011 and Luna and Bernhardt Production Stills . . . 2012; and 3) this site's Movie Stills for nine more photos. * * * Luna: Odalys Medianero; Bernhardt: Frank X. Mur; Duende: Siegfried Waldemar Kutin.
Luna and Bernhardt cost under $14,000 to preproduce (June 2010 - June 2012) and shoot (last two "three-day weekends" of June-July, 2012), not counting $1,000 to reshoot a lens-flare-ruined scene (June 2013). The soundtrack's "Know'st Thou the Land" and "The Beloved is Near" (Franz Schubert) and the closing credits' "Ghost's Serenade" (Enrique Granados), obtained via Work Made For Hire agreements, will hopefully be joined by a Czech symphony orchestra-performed and -recorded "Entry of the Gods into Valhalla" (Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold) for the opening credits. Available recordings are either mediocre or prohibitively expensive, the latter also being the case with live U.S. symphony performances/recordings.
If, as is likely, an imminent, Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign will generate insufficient funds to complete Luna and Bernhardt, I welcome potential donors to email Frank X. Mur via the below-listed link if they deem this project worth their while.