Movies and Plays.

Cinema holds an important place in Max Dana’s life. The first film which had a real effect on her was Scarface. And later Casablanca (Michael Curtiz), Playtime (Jacques Tati), Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick). Varied movies with a preference for films noir of the 1940s and 1950s. Forest Gump, Blade Runner, La Vita e bella, Tron and action movies: Nikita, Heat, Smokin’Aces are also among her favorite movies. With a keen interest for independent cinema and films that address social and political issues: The President’s Men, Serpico, The Three Days of the Condor, The Third Man.

The first short-movie

At the end of the Eighties, Max Dana directed her first short-movie about hip-hop and graffiti, a theme which was not commonly addressed in conventional cinema at the time. Young people, enthusiasts of freedom, drawing on the walls their fears and their hopes, living from day to day without worrying about the next day, until one of the members of the group loses his parents and has to take the place of the head of the family. A radical change for a whole new life, leading to misunderstandings with family and friends, and a reality which locks the young man into a daily humdrum routine that he considers alienating and no future.

A play for theatre

A few years later, in the early Nineties, Max Dana wrote and directed her first play for theatre. A couple at the edge of the rupture tears. The text is frank, without turning, punctuated by cynicism and sometimes even mockery; the heavy atmosphere puts in parallel two stories, two broken childhoods which collide and with similar fates, but in different times and places. The story going and coming between times, shows that the History is after all only repeating itself over and over again. It’s quite difficult for the two main characters to extract the good side out of their delicate situation. Indifference of the ones, submission of the others; it’s a dutiful question of Survival and Freedom.

As for now, Max Dana does not have a project of directing or stage setting, she dedicates herself rather to the writing.

Books and Scripts.

The writing, as well as cinema, was always part of the life of Max Dana, and during her studies she created a student newspaper which allowed her to express her interest for writing through various topics among which geopolitics but also movies and video games. She first considered to be a journalist and more specifically a photojournalist. At that time already, she wrote poetry and short stories to be published in the newspaper and soon after germinated the idea of her first book.

Max Dana writes for many years but in spite of a finished manuscript (about memory loss, its consequences and induced responsibilities), she does not seem for the moment ready to publish the book and has not taken any step in this direction. One day, maybe.

Science fiction (Steampunk-like dystopia), the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema and environment issues (like water scarcity) are some of the topics Max Dana is currently working on. At this time, she didn’t decide yet if they will be books or movie scripts.

Max dedicates a lot of time on researches for her writing and only time will tell how it will come out. The writing process needs time and she is not the kind of person to dash off or hurry a project. There is no deadline, it is only about time and inspiration.