Land of the Mustaches is an autobiographical story of a young girl growing up in the Displaced Persons refugee camps with her mother and grandmother after World War II left them starving and stateless, and her father's disappearance into Stalin's notorious Gulag labor camps in Siberia —two hard paths that parallel each other until they finally merge into one story: The ultimate celebration of resilience and the human spirit.
Six AMPAS members came together to make this unique, truly independent, and micro-budget film: Actress Rutanya Alda, writer, producer, and performer; acclaimed Emmy-nominated editor, David Ray; brilliant Emmy-winning composer, Charles Bernstein; director and award-winning filmmaker, Leon Joosen; acclaimed Emmy-winning animator, Candy Kugel; and producer Donna Dickman.
For more information, visit her FilmFreeway site: https://filmfreeway.com/LandoftheMustaches
I came to this project through longtime colleague Leon Joosen, who was still working on his projects at Buzzco's studio space.
He had been hired as Rutanya's director to film her one-woman story. Rutanya's history was very compelling, and it would be a way of expanding a talking head movie to represent parts that couldn't be easily found as stock footage. I was asked to create a couple of scenes, and I wanted to help Leon who had been such a great part of my personal films since he started to work out of Buzzco in 2014.
Unfortunately, Leon got pulled onto other of his own projects as post production was starting, so we didn't have a chance to work together. The couple of scenes I had done with Leon inspired Rutanya and editor David Ray to ask for more animation—so what started out as possibly 1-2 minutes of animation turned out to be 10 minutes in the final 90-minute film!
Emily Compton, my tech consultant, and I put together these 5 short films to highlight the animation.
All images (c) Buzzco Associates, inc.
